


Seven Percent

by handoverthebiscuit



Category: Bleach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-05-07 15:49:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5462252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handoverthebiscuit/pseuds/handoverthebiscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Accidental eye contact with passing strangers has never been more awkward - especially with the power to see into the past and the future. Two complete strangers meet by chance and wind up, against all odds, changing everything. (Or do they?) AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I've been writing! This fic's title was based on the above quote, as you might have guessed, and is about the other seven percent that makes us human, makes us different from each other, makes us who we are. It's a slightly heavy theme, but the narration is light! It's also about the transition of Hitsugaya's character from the weird kid he used to be to the stoic troubled adult(?) we all know and love. I know this chapter doesn't have him in it, but trust me, he's the main character. Ichigo's the loyal sidekick, as usual. Just a warning, though, that while I am a firm believer in Hitsugaya's cold genius and intelligence, I also sincerely believe he has a streak of evil brat that he calculatedly unleashes upon his opponents and flummoxes them into defeat. Artistic liberties, humour me, please. 
> 
> I was also planning to have this up by the end of summer break, but I've gone and done a terrific job of that, haven't I? Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone!

_We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins,_  
carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains.  
93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames,  
we are all just stars that have people names.

_-Nikita Gill_

* * *

**Prologue**

Kurosaki Ichigo was seated on a comfortable mossy patchwork of wildflowers and wild grass at the base of the abandoned lighthouse by the eastern cliffs. Behind him, a tattered flyer fluttered in the mild breeze, touting an uprising for equality between the Seers and Clairvoyants.

Ichigo didn't believe such rubbish could be possible.

Talks of the impending uprising and its accompanying social instability was, as far as he was concerned, completely unnecessary. The social gap between the Seers and Clairvoyants had been in place for as long as history was recorded, and all this meant was that his chances of being publicly lynched for being a Seer were highly unlikely to change for the better anyway - he would rather spend his time avoiding the less-than-pleasant people of the Kingdom of Cair.

Cair was, as far as Ichigo was considered, a  _minute_  kingdom. With a grand population of less than three thousand and a childless ageing monarch, the Kingdom of Cair was really just a rock in the sea with a castle in the middle. And some nice cliffs and a pretty waterfall. In fact, the monarchy's glaring lack of an heir apparent was beginning to worry the higher-ups, while it remained the butt of many jokes among the regular civilians. Ichigo wasn't too bothered – he was pretty sure the King would do something about it eventually.

As one of his efforts to shy away from public interaction, Ichigo was waiting for night to fall, for the sky was clear as glass and the moon was due to rise late - perfect for watching the stars. He loved lying back in the surrounding darkness, simply watching the constellations rise and fall, tracing perfect arcs around the northern celestial pole. The sky changed from season to season, but the stars themselves never did - their light twinkled and wavered seemingly weakly, but they never faded, never changed, never ceased to provide him an eternal calm.

The time he spent alone stargazing was always a welcome respite, a small one-man universe where the world didn't look down their noses upon Seers - people like him who saw into the past. It wasn't anything they could control, wasn't anything  _anyone_  could control, yet someone had to take the blame for something society didn't like. He hated not being able to look people in the eye, not being able to know for sure what someone looked like, for fear of being an unwilling audience to their memories, then being put down for invasion of privacy, being held responsible for something he couldn't control. He only knew the faces of people whose past he had once seen.

In the coming spring, ten years would have passed since his mother's death, and though he wasn't foolish enough to believe the common lore that the souls of the dead rose above the earth as stars to watch over them, he liked to think that she was very much like the stars - never changing, ever burning, always on his side. His sisters couldn't remember her, but he would eternally be haunted by her absence. As a result - slightly creepy, he had to admit, even if only to himself - the memories he saw from others were mostly before that time period, before he turned seven and lived an obliviously happy childhood with both parents.

Now, while he was waiting for the sky to darken, he was fiddling with his new binoculars, twirling the knobs and revelling in how smooth and responsive the chunky contraption was, looking around the Islands of Cair. There was a regal-looking carriage pulled by two incredibly well groomed steeds, running through the central streets of the town. It shook slightly as it made its way down the uneven brick roads that snaked around the main island like an unruly spider's web. It really was a nice carriage, he thought to himself as he followed its journey out of town with his binoculars, with its intricate carving outside and heavy curtains inside.

In hindsight, he knew he was an idiot for not looking away when a pair of hands within the carriage swept the dark curtains aside, but perhaps he thought that the sheer distance would overcome the impact of seeing someone eye to eye, or perhaps he had been too caught up with other thoughts and was just looking without thinking. Either way, he was now a first-class idiot and criminal, because the face that looked out the window was one he had seen too many times - in photographs, on stamps,  _everywhere_ , and his breath caught in his throat.

The moment he was about to be thrown at least ten years into the King's past, he knew he was doomed.

It was like being punched in the stomach, then probably like being thrown into space and sucked down a wormhole, not that he would ever find out what that actually felt like. Reality stretched and fell away from his senses, spinning maddeningly and terrifyingly and fading into a distant mist, though he knew nothing of the sort was actually happening, and he could feel the soft ground under him even as the sensation of unstoppable, uncontrollable falling overwhelmed him, whirling in a mix of colours faster and faster around him. He knew it would eventually stop, and he would be faced with experiences and emotions and memories and nostalgia that weren't his, yet every single time, he didn't know what to expect.

The falling and spinning didn't slow gradually like it usually did, and instead screeched to an abrupt halt, as if he had been switched to a separate plane of existence momentarily, before being dumped back down in reality, where he was disoriented and confused and out of breath.

He had heard of such things, but never quite believed it could actually happen. But he could think of no other explanation for the sudden interruption of the vision.

_Why does the King have a block on his memories?_

_What could have happened, that the King would want so badly to forget?_

_._

 


	2. Part I

**Part I**

* * *

Hitsugaya sat at the edge of the precipice, legs dangling off the impossible drop. Far below, violent waves eroded the rock base, spitting foam and spray with what had to be a deafening roar that he could barely hear from such a height. He tried to imagine what it was like to be down there, with the rogue winds and the salty air and the rhythmic yet erratic beating of the dark water, and wondered if it was better than being up high. Absently, he knocked the sides of his boots together and watched as loose dirt spiralled down, and pulled his jacket closer around him against the thin morning fog, not that it would help much. He had tucked himself away from the questioning stares of the overly inquisitive general public, into a notch in the wall just below the lip of the cliff. It could barely be called a cave - it was just large enough for him to lie flat on his back if he wanted to. Instead, he leaned his shoulder against the rough rock surface on his right, listening to the hollow and distance echoes of the turbulent sea below.

The peaceful respite he had managed to obtain was short-lived, as little showerings of gravel and dirt began sprinkling down onto his knees from above. He thought better of pulling his large hood back, and leaned out of the crevice to squint upwards, only to immediately regret it. Another handful of loose gravel crumbled downwards, accompanied by a string of cusses and a pair of unsteady legs dressed in tattered trousers that made purchase on the shelf of rock next to where he sat.

'What the hell,' a voice, presumably belonging to the legs, muttered. 'I could have sworn it was easier to get here the last time.'

Hitsugaya jolted, not taking his eyes off the intruder as the stranger continued to scrabble against the rock for purchase. Moments later, the owner of the legs ducked into the small, dry space, and froze on the spot, his jaw agape in surprise. Hitsugaya supposed he had the same mildly horrorstruck and wholly taken aback expression on his own face, but hoped he did not look quite as stupefied.

The stranger could not be beyond his teens, and sported a crop of bright orange hair and a pair of dark brown eyes. He had not blinked for so long, that Hitsugaya half expected the stranger's eyes to shrivel up on the spot. As their gazes locked, Hitsugaya felt his blood run cold, as if an icy hand had gripped him at the back of his neck, cold tendrils seeping into him and overriding his entire being.

It wasn't an unfamilar sensation, yet he could never be ready for what followed. He felt himself falling - unobstructedly, endlessly, alone, for what could only be described as eternity, as the sky fell away only to reveal a bottomless chasm that was more sky. He braced himself as the descent eventually slowed, almost as if he were being pulled upwards by an alien gravity, then held his breath as the rushing air transformed into still, glassy water that engulfed his senses as the world flipped upside down - not that he had any way to tell the sky from the ground. He knew it was all never real, could still feel the solid rock against his shoulder, the rough cracks in the cliff under his sweaty palms and the salty wind on his face, and knew that when he resurfaced from the water that never existed, he would be in someone else's mind, in someone else's future, seeing through someone else's eyes. He was never ready.

The water fell away in a shimmering veil, vaporising in silvery strands and leaving him dry and disoriented -

And there was fire. Acrid smoke rose in thick, poisonous plumes as people crowded arround suffocatingly; the air was scalding and scattered with ash, and the salty sea breeze tasted bitter. He recognised the landscape of the southern district of the rocky island, with its cliffs to the west and gravel beach to the southeast, but did not recognise the voices that rose in an echoing, beating crescendo that spiralled upwards and outwards.

'There he is!' Accusatory chants reverberated across the village square, and the body he inhabited was much bigger and clumsier than he was used to. He threw a glance over his shoulder, where the sea calmly washed ashore and the almost imperceptibly thin crescent moon hung high in the sky, above the circular waves that spread through the isolated lagoon that enclosed the southern coast.

His attention was drawn back by the consuming fire and the disorderly shouts for justice and law. There was nowhere to run, his pursuers were closing in, and he realised he did not know what it was that burned so fiercely and poisonously. The air was thick with smoke and chaos that shrouded his senses, and panic began to bubble at the back of his throat as strong arms pinned his own painfully behind his back, twisted cruelly. 'We'll show you what you deserve for your blasphemy, you criminal,' a gravelly voice threatened from afar, loud as if it were near yet hollow as if it were distant.

Digging his heels into the ground, he tried - albeit futilely - to shake them off and wrestle his way out, and even though there was more strength in his arms than he knew would ever possess in reality, he only succeeded in stumbling sideways, hitting the moist pebbly ground with a pathetic _smack_. A foreign instinct urged him to run, to fight, anything but go down without a fight, but a heavy-soled, well-polished boot ground his cheek unforgivingly into the rock, and he finally recognised the gold trimming on the navy blue uniform of the royal police force. 'We'll see what the King has to say about you,' the officer sneered at him, then turned away to snap at some subordinates. 'Take him away.'

The iron grip that restrained him faded as his surroundings grew distant, as if a growing void enveloped him, and Hitsugaya sagged in relief as the rocky beach around him dissolved into that all-too-familiar, unsettling flipping of his insides as he continued to hurtle sickeningly downwards. It had possibly been the most traumatising and disturbing vision he had ever had, and he was of half a mind to push the young man with the outrageous hair off the cliff once he felt well enough to.

The basalt of the notch that surrounded him slowly solidified as he reconciled with reality, forcing himself to take deep, salty breaths while he waited for his senses to return. He let out a sigh, grateful that it was over, then groaned internally when the gravity of the situation dawned on him - here he was, reeling from the recoil of a vision, and about to begin fraternising with a wanted criminal.

Just great.

.

.

When Ichigo lowered himself into the narrow space in the cliff he had been spending most nights in, he nearly fell off in shock when he saw a boy sitting in his usual spot, idly swinging his legs. The boy was evidently just as surprised, and Ichigo averted his gaze a fraction too slowly, cursing when their eyes met. He braced himself for the nauseating sensation of being overwhelmed by a complete stranger's memories that would barrel into him once the world stopped spinning.

He would never get used to reliving memories he never had, welling with joy or grief or anguish or regret that wasn't his, being overcome with what he could only describe as schrodinger's _deja vu_. Vicious gusts of icy and hot wind assaulted him from all sides, simultaneously freezing and burning his senses, then he was falling, falling, _falling_ \- and lurched to an abrupt halt, an unfamiliar, unpleasant experience akin to walking into a glass wall and being spat out, left unceremoniously to gather his dignity, collect his wits, and assemble his thoughts. He had only experienced this once before, just two weeks ago, and wasn't sure if this was better or worse than being subject to a stranger's memories.

'God,' Ichigo gasped once his lungs found air. 'What did you do?' he demanded.

'What did _I_ do?' the boy retorted. 'What did _you_ do?' He looked spitting mad, albeit slightly disoriented, deep blue-green eyes glowing murderously in the shadow of the hood of the jacket he wore, mouth twisted distastefully down into an irate frown.

'Nothing!' Ichigo defended himself desperately.

'I don't think people who did "nothing" get themselves arrested and persecuted in the near future, while wanted posters of their face paper the town,' the boy accused recklessly. 'I know who you are, notorious criminal of infamy Kurosaki Ichigo, your ugly face is everywhere, even on the toilet walls,' he elaborated impressively. 'I must say those posters are unfairly flattering, and that you are horrific in the flesh.'

Hitsugaya was quite impressed with himself for not having thrown up yet.

Ichigo squinted. 'So you're a Clairvoyant,' he contemplated aloud, ignoring the completely juvenile but eloquently effective insult. 'And a novice, it seems. Could you tell me what you saw? I, er, especially the part about the arrest and persecution and...you know,' he trailed off pathetically with a weak wave of his hand.

The boy folded his arms and turned back to face the sea. 'I'm not obliged to; other people pay fortunes to Clairvoyants only to get some useless vision of them sitting around eating an unexciting breakfast.'

'I know, so I suggest an information trade, and maybe an alliance.'

'And what information could you possibly have for me? If you want something from me, perhaps I could find you a mirror, so that you may ascertain for yourself the unfortunate disaster that is your face.'

'There's a block,' Ichigo ventured, mentally berating himself for being so suicidal. 'A block on your memories,' he elaborated. 'Why is there a block?' Having said that, Ichigo quickly began consulting his mental thesaurus for a synonym for _block_ , but came away dry.

'Lucky you, then,' the green-eyed boy drawled so dramatically he could practically hear him roll his eyes. 'You just get persecuted and arrested in what looks like a witchhunt.' He paused for half a beat, before adding with a blasé shrug, 'People never liked Seers.'

'Look,' Ichigo tried to reason, 'memories don't get sealed away by themselves. Magicians place blocks, and since you're a Clairvoyant I highly doubt that Magician was you. Doesn't it bother you, that you don't know how much of you is a secret from yourself? That who you are now could be a stranger to who you really are? That someone has tampered with your mind and could do it again whenever they wanted to?'

Hitsugaya pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on them, closing his eyes against the cool breeze, and took a deep breath before replying. 'That sounds like the logic of the desperate. What does it matter, if I am not the person I would otherwise be? How can I be less of myself than I am?'

'And that,' Ichigo rebutted, 'sounds like the logic of the even-more-desperate. Look, we're really both in the same boat. If you help me change my future, I'll help you find your past. Do we, or do we not, have a deal?'

Ichigo watched as the late afternoon sun silhouetted the boy's face and after a moment of hesitation, even as his expression remained frigid and emotionless, he held out his right hand, which was small and bony and dirty from clambering around the rock face. 'Deal,' he agreed. 'The name's Hitsugaya.'

Ichigo took the proffered hand and shook it firmly. 'Right. I'm Kurosaki Ichigo. I'm not really as hideous as you say, am I?'

Hitsugaya shrugged.

.

.

Hitsugaya was admittedly perturbed by Kurosaki's claim about his memories and his insinuations about his identity. He knew he was distracted as he treaded the familiar uphill path home that wound around the various rocky faces of the island, the unceasing rushing of the fierce ocean echoing further and further below as he ascended sure-footedly as only a local could - but his mind was far off, slipping down the unfamiliar downhill slope of what-ifs and groundless theories, the unceasing rushing of self-doubt echoing louder and louder in his ears as he descended deeper and deeper into thought, fumbling for pieces of himself he could be sure of.

There was nothing.

When he arrived at the thatched house he had come to call home, instead of jerking the door open, he wound around to the back and stepped up onto a sun-faded window sill, hefting himself up onto the roof, scraping his knee on the ledge on his way up. The house was just far enough from the edge that the frothing waves below were hidden beneath the lip of the rock, leaving him with a panoramic view of the calm ocean painted with a gleaming golden path that led to the half-gone sun.

He was barely surprised when footsteps followed him around the cottage, and didn't bat an eyelid when Hinamori called up at him, 'Granny's going to freak out if she finds out you're on the roof again!'

Hitsugaya ignored her, squinting into the horizon and hoping she would go away. She was a year older than he was, and was the boisterous granddaughter of the old lady who had taken him under her wing - he had always assumed that he was too young at the time to remember his adoption, but now he couldn't be sure if it wasn't because a Magician had purposefully altered his memories. He only knew that Granny had once told him she'd found him at the edge of the woods.

He felt the surface of the roof shift slightly, and looked back to see Hinamori with one elbow on the edge of the roof, struggling to pull herself up from the sill below. Between efforts to swing her leg up and vicious glares in his direction, she berated him incessantly. 'You can't keep ignoring me and brood forever on the roof, because one day the wind will toss you off into the sea, and if you were a little more gentlemanly and less like a half-eroded stone block you would help me up, and you would probably also have a girlfriend by now,' she ran off at the mouth as she always did. Sometimes, it seemed she would never run out of words. Even though her mouth was moving like a bullet train, none of its energy appeared to be of any substantial use in climbing onto roofs.

Upon realising that Hinamori wasn't going to turn around and leave anytime soon, Hitsugaya leaned forward and held out one hand with a sigh of resignation. The brown-haired girl grabbed it and finally swung herself up and she sat, dishevelled, brushing dirt and dust from her skirt.

'For the sake of the general public and your dignity I certainly hope you're wearing some decent underwear today,' Hitsugaya said tonelessly, obviously indifferent towards both the general public and Hinamori's dignity.

'Rude,' Hinamori huffed.

They fell into silence, each not looking at the other, as the streaks of colour in the sky slowly faded into the greyish blue of dusk. Eventually, Hinamori turned and demanded with a scowl, 'I know something's bothering you, so spit it out.' Her hair flew messily aross her face in the chilly evening wind, and she wiped a strand from her mouth. 'Or I will personally push you down, and then you will have a broken skull to bother you too' she said as she gestured wildly towards the ground.

Hitsugaya hesitated. It was a question he should have asked a lifetime ago, and yet it had never occurred to him even once. If there was a time to hit himself hard, it was probably now. '...What do you remember about when your grandmother brought me in?' Careful not to make eye contact, he kept his gaze firmly on the blinding red sun.

He listened to Hinamori exhale slowly, which slowly turned into a sigh. 'I think I was five, but I don't really remember. Maybe you could try asking Granny?'

He shook his head, and asked, 'But do you remember other things from that time?'

'Sure,' Hitsugaya could practically hear the smile that lit up her face together with the lightened tone of her voice. 'I used to follow Granny everywhere - she would take me down to the edge of the woods to pick berries, then we would hike to the southern lagoon to eat lunch by the water.' Hinamori sighed, distant and dreamy. 'Maybe you don't remember? You've been along too, and I think you were a terrible berry-picker. And there was the time Granny bought a watermelon from the market - we fought so hard over the last slice. You were such a cute kid, it's too bad you became such a grump,' she joked, elbowing him in the side.

It was strange, that Hinamori had such clear memories of simple moments, yet could not remember how, or when they had met - it was equally strange, that he remembered little of the incidents she recalled with obvious ease. The sun was setting in a gentle angle - only a small sliver of it was left now, although the sky remained bright enough to see the shadows of faraway ships against the horizon - reminding him that autumn would be declining into winter in just over a month, and that ten years would have passed since his supposed adoption. Would anyone remember the truth of his identity, and if they did, how could he trust them if he couldn't trust even his own memory?

_Someone has tampered with your mind and could do it again whenever they wanted to._

The words spoken to him earlier that day haunted him like a persisting headache, echoing hollowly in his mind, driving him to madness. He knew a skilled Magician could alter, or even completely destroy memories with a mere touch to the head.

How could he tell truth from fabrication if memories were so fragile, so easily deformed and twisted into lies?

Did it even matter?

 _Of course it matters_ , he tried to convince himself, with little effect. How could he find the truth if he didn't know what it looked like?

He hadn't realised he was clutching his head in what must have been a despairing manner until he felt a hand pry his sweaty fingers away from his hair. The light touch seemed to make him feel even more nauseous than he already was, and for a moment he couldn't quite remember what had been plaguing his mind.

'Are you sick?' Hinamori asked softly.

Hitsugaya took a deep breath of salty, humid air and glanced around. The ocean was quickly turning a deep black while the last traces of blue pulled away from the sky into the horizon, leaving a scattering of stars in its wake. He vaguely wondered how much time had passed, and if the dizzying combination of confusion and frustration counted as "sick".

'No, I'm fine,' he mumbled as he batted her hand away. 'We should get back before Granny gets worried.'

Hinamori snorted. 'She's probably heard the roof creaking and shaking.'

'Then she must be freaking out,' Hitsugaya threw her previous argument back at her, just as he jumped off the roof, crouching neatly into a three-point landing on the grass below while Hinamori yelled at him about recklessness and broken legs and skulls from the roof, and he couldn't help but marvel at how trivial everything they were bickering about was when he measured it up against the situation he had gotten himself embroiled in.

If he wanted to, he could preserve this state of calm his life had settled into - he could abandon the notion of truth for comfort, continue meandering down this path of least resistance.

He wasn't sure if it was what he wanted.

.

.

To say Ichigo was bothered by the day's encounters would have been an understatement. He had since retreated to the comforting solitude offered by the woods in the northern parts of the islands, another one of his several hideouts since a price had been placed on his arrest. Spending two whole weeks on the run meant either the royal guard was not really doing a great job, or he was unexpectedly good at avoiding them. He had, at one point in time, considered leaving Cair entirely, but just leaving his family without a single word had ripped his insides into pieces. He didn't want to think about leaving the only land he was familiar with for another harsh foreign land.

It had all started with a bad decision two weeks ago by the foot of the old lighthouse, which rapidly escalated into a terrible misunderstanding. He had known all his life the way Seers were prejudiced against simply for their ability - to experience another's memories, which amounted to a severe degree of invasion of privacy, where there was no way to protect oneself. He could imagine why people were so quick to judge his character from his identity, but it wasn't as if he had a choice in whether or not he _wanted_ to play audience to complete strangers' memories - it was just as unpleasant an experience for both parties, and he was sick and tired of constantly taking in the antipathy of society while they practically worshipped Clairvoyants for the exact same talent.

Hitsugaya had said there would be a witchhunt. The thought itself was unsettling, but not knowing how far into the future, or what events led to its occurrence, was far worse. He needed to know more, couldn't live his life on the run much longer - he missed his family, and refused to be considered a criminal merely by _existing_. He needed to do something, change something, to save himself from falling victim to the criminalising and demonising bigotry of society that condemned his existence to something inferior - something undeserving of even the freedom to live a normal life.

 _I didn't even do anything wrong_ , Ichigo reiterated to himself. _Being_ a Seer was not, in itself, a punishable crime, but he was definitely the small town's most wanted man for having looked the King in the eyes with the Sight. _If I were just a normal person_ , he griped, _none of this would have mattered. So what if I saw the King? Everyone sees the King in pictures._

But he wasn't a normal person, and he couldn't do anything about _that_ , so he would have to change something else instead.

The only way, he reasoned, was to change the future - and the Clairvoyant boy was his best bet.

.

.

The next day, Hitsugaya slipped out of the house while Hinamori was still half-asleep, bidding a quick good-bye to their grandmother. He was dressed as if he were going to school – jeans tucked into his boots and a pullover to hide his dismal regard for dress sense from the world – and grabbed his book bag on his way out.

He trekked downhill towards the paved roads of the town, shrugging off the piercing glances at his bright white hair, ignoring the judgmental suspicion as he passed right by the district school, and headed coolly northward. If he _looked_ like he knew where he was going, nobody would question him. So he walked confidently forward, fixing his gaze on the distant sea, which was glittering in the sun's brightening light. There were banners all over the town, pieces of paper calling for the people to rise for equality – calling for a revolution of the Seers. Many were damaged, many were torn, as if even putting them up had cost an effort. He wondered how long a society could balance on this precipice of pent-up unrest. After a lingering glance at one yellow poster with a cheesy slogan, he turned his back and left.

The woods were over an hour's walk from the city square – and even further from his home. By then, the sun was high in the sky and lessons at his school would be well under way. The woods cast a dark shadow over the ground, and the undergrowth was shrouded in a dank atmosphere. He stepped onto the flattened earthy path tread by most visitors to the woods and looked around. It didn't take long to find what he was searching for, for a flash of bright orange quickly caught his eye. It was a miracle the idiot hadn't been arrested yet, given his far-below-par camouflage efforts. He could at least wear something with a hood.

'Ditching school to meet an older boy you met under dubious circumstances,' Ichigo greeted jokingly with feigned condescension. 'Whatever will your parents think?'

Hitsugaya snorted. 'I'd throw myself off the cliffs before you can wrestle my corpse into your bed. Did anyone ever tell you that your sense of humour is dreadfully distasteful?' He continued walking, kicking up sticks and dried leaves, and leaving the hotheaded teenager in the shrubbery.

'So,' Ichigo jogged a few paces to catch up, 'Why the clandestine convention today?'

'I'm taking our shady deal very seriously, so you are going to tell me everything you know. In exchange, I'm going to see your future again, and- and see what I can tell from it.' He stumbled uncharacteristically over his words.

'Um, wow,' Ichigo said quite lamely.

A fifteen-minute walk led them to a large fallen tree. Its astounding girth made a wide platform larger than a dinner table. Sunlight filtered faintly through the foliage, warming the chilly ground from the cold night. Hitsugaya clambered up the rough surface of the bark, dusting his hands off when he reached the top, and Ichigo followed suit. The sounds of leaves rustling in the wind and birds voices effectively blocked out the noise of the ever-raging sea that washed over the rest of the island, leaving a simple and comforting quiet.

Once they had both settled into natural seats created by the few remaining branches of the tree, Ichigo began fidgeting restlessly while Hitsugaya eyed him with apprehension from a healthy distance away.

'I, er, have not told you of the circumstances of my wantedness, have I?' Ichigo said at a long last. He was absently peeling bark off the tree. 'It may or may not be important, I think.'

Hitsugaya waved a hand nonchalently, gesturing for him to continue.

'Well, um, how should I say this- I mean- Uh…Did you know? That the King has a block on his memories just like you do?' He blurted out.

In the passing momentary silence, Hitsugaya instantly realised the legal implications of that one nugget of information Ichigo had gleaned from the King, and buried his face in his palms. 'Oh my god, you are even stupider than I first thought.'

'No no nooo,' Ichigo protested. 'It was a total accident, I assure you. I'm not _completely_ daft.

'Uh-huh.'

'Anyway, the important part is, both you and the King have had your memories altered at most just a couple of years apart, _and_ our silly little island doesn't have a local Magician skilled enough for such powerful and long-lasting blocks.'

Hitsugaya kneaded his temples slowly, as if he were still recovering from the previous punch of idiocy. 'When was this "couple of years apart" that you speak of?' he asked.

Ichigo shrugged. 'Ten, twelve years ago? Maybe a little more.'

This was distressing news, thought Hitsugaya. Either a Magician had travelled from another city and gone on a mass memory-wiping spree – there was a very real, oddly terrifying possibility that he and the King were not the only two affected – or someone within his circle of immediate acquaintances was a lesser Magician and had been constantly working him through the years. But that made even _less_ sense, because anyone he knew well enough to meet every year or so didn't know the King well enough to meet _him_ often enough to sustain a block for over ten years. Unless, of course, said lesser Magician erased his or her own existence from his previous memory as well…

Ichigo was vaguely concerned over the constipated expression that had twisted Hitsugaya's eyebrows together. Had he said something wrong (again)? He was about to ask if the younger boy was okay, but stopped with his mouth half-open because Hitsugaya spoke first.

'Okay, thank you, that helped.' Hitsugaya ran both hands through his hair, smoothing it backwards as he took a deep breath of clean forest air. Ichigo nearly laughed when the crop of white hair flopped back up into its usual disarray. Consternation was written all over his expression.

'Are you sure I helped? You look like you've eaten a fork.'

'Heaven knows how you know what _that_ looks like,' Hitsugaya muttered under his breath. 'My turn,' he said out loud, as he forced his expression to relax. 'Come over here.'

Ichigo scooted over, and though he could tell from the closed eyes and deep breaths that the Clairvoyant boy was not quite as ready as he pretended to be, he complied anyway.

'Okay,' Hitsugaya breathed, more for his own benefit than for anyone else's. He pressed his fingers lightly to either side of his temple, thumbs resting at the tips of his jawbone just under his ears. He wondered if Ichigo would actually see his memories this time, or if he would run into another block.

_Think. Remember the last vision._

The suffocating fire was all he could conjure up, and he could feel his breaths quicken and his heart rate surge at the mere thought.

_Think – what else was there?_

The calm ocean. The southern beach. The thin crescent moon. Bits and pieces of the vision from the previous day came together slowly, like smoke coalescing. Last night had been a half moon, so the future he had seen was most likely in a weeks time – he had yet to see anything beyond a month away, so he was willing to bet on this.

_Concentrate. One week from now. The moon. The ocean. The fire._

He grimaced.

'Okay,' he said again, not that it made him feel any more _okay_ , and opened his eyes. After a moment's hesitation, he lifted his gaze and looked dead straight into Ichigo's warm brown eyes.

_Take me to the future._

And he fell through time once more – only this time, he was prepared.

.

When the rushing in his ears finally stopped, Hitsugaya opened his eyes, fully aware that he would be in a vision – in Ichigo's future. He was in a back alley, probably near the market district, judging by the closely packed wooden buildings lined up neatly on a stone-paved floor. Many had wooden stools and buckets stacked up by the back entrance steps. He could sense the buzz of civilisation on the other side of this row of shophouses he was hiding behind, and was relieved that this time, the vision was a peaceful one.

He still wasn't used to walking – or anything, really – as a long, lanky thing. It was a strange sensation, as Ichigo's body moved according to its own intentions, and he had to take care of the finer movements as he was now the presiding consciousness. It was _very_ strange. He supposed that ultimately, Ichigo (of the future) was in charge of the situation, and all he could do was ride along. So when Ichigo turned and headed down the alley, Hitsugaya groaned.

 _Time to learn how to walk like you're tall_ , he thought. Then, _The ground is disturbingly far away._

He walked – stumbled and lurched, more like – towards the alley's exit, scaring the wits out of a dirty grey cat in the process. He was pleased to notice that the bumbling orange-haired idiot had since taken to wearing a hoodie, and was even more pleased when he looked up to the sky and found a pale, almost imperceptibly slim crescent moon suspended in the pearlescent early evening sky.

The uprising propaganda seemed to paper public spaces, even this back alley, with a renewed ferocity, and he couldn't suppress the itch to tear some of those posters down.

As he neared the market square – he was getting better at this walking-like-a-normal-tall-person thing – he could smell smoke and see ash floating in the breeze, obscuring parts of the sky into a flat grey. Hitsugaya allowed himself a little mental fistpump, and continued taking in his surroundings as best as he could.

He could now hear the bustle of people going about their business at the market, buying and selling and haggling and bartering. He sauntered past a noticeboard – only tall people could saunter and not look completely hilarious, so he'd better savour the moment, he thought – and immediately stopped short, doing a double take, because unfortunately the future Ichigo walked right past.

It was the wanted poster he was all too familiar with, plastered with an artist's impression of the orange-headed teenager and the reward for his capture. However, it wasn't this that caught his eye, but another, newer bulletin. Another wanted poster was tacked up, this time with both a picture and a name. _Ichimaru Gin_ , he thought. Who the hell was that? What did he do? This one sure wasn't up this morning when he passed by the market – it had to be new.

Hitsugaya filed away that piece of information, and settled back down. He was beginning to get a hang of this Clairvoyance thing too, he decided, and looked around furtively as Ichigo skirted the edge of the market, carefully avoiding people.

He was headed for the southern beach, Hitsugaya realised.

_Nononono. Don't-_

The smell of the acrid fire was burning his senses and his collectedness. He still hadn't figured out _where_ it was burning – was it the town square? It was nearby. Maybe that Ichimaru guy set the fire.

 _Don't confuse facts and speculation_ , a tiny voice at the back of his head warned him.

Ichigo had, by now, exited the market uneventfully, and was making his way towards a long flight of stairs cut into the stone of the cliff leading down to the shore. In a last desperate effort, Hitsugaya swivelled around and looked at the market square, where two men were putting up a sign by the newsstand. A small crowd had gathered, abuzz with muted commotion, but for once he could see over most people's heads. The sign was a deep blue, written with gold words – the Kingdom's royal colour, he realised.

_**Cair celebrates the anointing of her Crown Prince** _

Hitsugaya choked.

_We have a Crown Prince?_

The sudden distraction had disrupted his concentration, he realised with dismay. He was losing his grip on the vision, and felt gravity slipping upwards as his own time began to claim him back. The market and the cliffs began fading while his ears filled with rushing water, and he had no choice but to let it take him back to the present.

.

Hitsugaya resurfaced to find himself leaning heavily against a tree branch, crouched in the space at the fork of the branch and the trunk of the fallen tree. Someone was holding him at the elbows and periodically shaking him.

'Hello? Earth to Toshiro? Anyone in?'

He groaned, the dizziness and nausea of returning from a vision still clinging strongly to him.

'What terrible things did you see?' He heard Ichigo ask, though the world hadn't stopped spinning enough for him to see anything yet.

'Let me go,' he mumbled, and pulled his arms away from the noisy teenager. 'And don't call me that,' he added.

To his credit, Ichigo did let him go while he recovered his wits, though he didn't stop yapping throughout.

'What? What? Are you sure you don't need any help? Is this really normal? Are you sure you're okay? Hello? Toshiro?'

As soon as he felt better, Hitsugaya was going to punch him. Twice. In fact, he was already feeling quite up to hitting someone.

'Well?' Ichigo asked, having noticed that Hitsugaya had regained lucidity and was starting to wind up a punch.

He didn't know where to start, but had to say _something_ , so he dropped his fist. 'There's a Crown Prince,' he blurted.

Ichigo stopped short, then bounced back. 'There what? No- there can't be. There isn't one.'

Hitsugaya chuckled weakly. 'I'm telling you there is one in a week's time.'

'The Queen's not pregnant,' Ichigo pointed out.

This observation calmed Hitsugaya down sufficiently for him to relay everything he had learnt to Ichigo, which was a very tiring conversation _riddled_ with questions that either he couldn't answer (Who's Ichimaru Gin? Have you heard of him before?) or were absolutely preposterous (What about the dirty grey cat? Was the moon waxing or waning? Are you sure?).

'There you go. I would watch the news really closely for this Ichimaru character. Also the Crown Prince, maybe,' Hitsugaya finished.

Ichigo looked thoughtful. 'Maybe they're celebrating the conception of the Crown Prince, because they can't wait for him to be born to celebrate.'

'I'd like to see you try anointing an embryo.'

'Very funny, smarty-pants.'

Hitsugaya punched Ichigo in the shoulder.

'On a more serious note,' Ichigo said as he rubbed his shoulder, 'What are you going to do now? I mean knowledge is power and all, but there isn't anything we can do with this grand nearly-nothing that we know.'

Hitsugaya shrugged curtly. 'Go home, bide my time. Sleep on it. I don't know. Either we find out, or next week much will be explained.'

Having finished his frustratingly rational yet cryptic spiel, Hitsugaya slid off his perch and traipsed out of the forest, book bag swinging behind him. If he hurried back, perhaps he could slip home before Hinamori gabbed away to her grandmother about how he hadn't shown up in school.

.

.

Unfortunately for the fourteen-year-old Clairvoyant, he never got anywhere near home.

Instead, he had been apprehended and waylaid by Hinamori on his way, and as a result was the begrudging audience to her incorrigible loquaciousness.

This time, she was gushing about something he had yet to comprehend.

'There's a famous Magician coming to town!' she sang into his ears.

Hitsugaya was not thrilled. 'You mean the kind of Magician that can destroy your memories and probably half your IQ with a single touch? The kind that can set you on fire just by looking at you? _That_ kind of Magician?' he demanded cynically. 'How is that a good thing?'

Hinamori pouted petulantly. 'There are plenty of _good_ Magicians,' she argued. 'I've read _sooo_ much about Sir Aizen – did you know he's the best Magician in the land? Not only is he powerful, he's smart, rich, kind – everything. _And_ he's of noble descent. I heard that he was unofficially appointed the heir to the throne of Cair if the King and Queen don't get busy soon.' She sighed dreamily. 'Is there a reason why you're being so antagonistic and everything?' She shot him a stern glare, all the while taking immense strides down the path as if she were in a massive hurry.

Hitsugaya ignored her question with a roll of the eyes, deftly avoiding it with a question of his own. 'Is there a reason why we're walking like we're running from a glacier?' he asked, because keeping up with Hinamori and her long legs (relatively) when she was power walking meant he was forced to jog, although at that awkward speed they could outrun nothing but a sliding glacier.

'They should be arriving any moment now,' she said. 'At the harbour.'

'You're going to meet him?' Hitsugaya asked in disbelief. 'Wait, who's "they"?'

'Sir Aizen and his apprentice!' Hinamori exclaimed with an excited wave of her arms, as if he were a total idiot. 'It's been like, ten years since they last came, but before that they used to come much more often – several times a year, apparently? Maybe you don't remember, but I've seen them once, and a huge crowd gathers at the harbour to welcome them! They're both handsome too, or so I've heard.'

'I'm sure they are,' he drawled.

'And don't you dare do anything dumb, because this is the closest thing I'm probably ever going to get to a celebrity encounter, got it?'

Hitsugaya vaguely registered making some kind of noncommittal noise, but the gears in his head were turning so fast he was sure his ears were steaming.

_There's a block on your memories._

_Magicians place blocks._

_Our silly little island doesn't have a local Magician skilled enough for such powerful and long-lasting blocks._

_Did you know he's the best Magician in the land?_

_Ten, twelve years ago? Maybe a little more._

_It's been like, ten years since they last came._

Oh, god. It couldn't be.

'Hinamori,' she turned at his voice, but didn't stop trucking down the rough path at top walking speed. 'Who's the apprentice?'

'Oh, the apprentice?' Hinamori was bewildered for a moment. Obviously her celebrity crush was only for Aizen. 'Um, I think his name's Ichi-something or the other, but that's unimportant. He's _nothing_ compared to Sir Aizen. Why?'

Hitsugaya stopped dead in his tracks. In her surprise, Hinamori stopped several paces ahead.

He was gripping the strap of his book bag so tightly his knuckles whitened.

'Ichimaru Gin,' he whispered. His voice was low and hoarse, as if he were parched. He was surprised Hinamori even heard him.

'Oh, yeah! That's the one!' Hinamori said blithely, before her smile settled into a suspicious frown. 'How did you know that?'

Wordlessly, Hitsugaya grabbed her wrist and began sprinting for the harbour.


	3. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am really, really, really very sorry. There was a period of time where I had forgotten about the existence of this account and happily continued updating this piece only on FFnet. And since I've finally gotten down to catching it up over here, we have Parts II and III at one go.

They arrived, slightly breathless, at the harbour at the tail end of the gathered crowd.

Hitsugaya cursed under his breath, and began pushing his way through the crowd, beneath most people's line of sight where it was easier to shove and be given in to.

'Sorry. 'Scuse me. Coming through.' After elbowing at least five people in the side and treading on many more toes, Hitsugaya stopped apologising and focused on trailblazing.

'What are you _doing_?' Hinamori hissed at him, hot on his heels and not exactly complaining about how his endeavour was bringing her closer to a better view.

'I know what I'm doing!' he hissed right back, shrugging off her grip on his shoulder.

'No you don't,' she whispered fiercely. 'Stop that right now. What's gotten into you?'

'I need to talk to them,' he said stubbornly, elbowing someone else aside and squeezing through the gap.

'You can't just go up to them like that! This is exactly the kind of dumb stuff I warned you not to do!' Hinamori jabbed a finger around in the air.

'You don't get how important this is,' he said furiously. He tried to shake off the hold she'd had on his arm, but this time she wouldn't let go. They were nearly at the front now, and he could see a polished horse-drawn carriage waiting by the boat docked at the harbour.

Before he could tyrannise any more members of the public, Hinamori had twisted his right arm behind his back and grabbed his left to prevent him from elbowing any more innocent bystanders. 'This is the dumbest thing you have ever thought of,' she scolded. 'And tomorrow you will thank me for stopping you. You can't just go and be belligerent in front of the most respected Magicians around, okay?' She now had both arms twisted far back, and Hitsugaya wanted to hit her. He wriggled and twisted, dragging his weight down heavily, but succeeded only in losing both the argument and his greatest opportunity of the century as the horses trotted primly off into the distance, pulling the shiny gold-trimmed carriage with them. Never had he loathed being smaller than Hinamori more than he did at that moment.

.

.

Two days had passed since the harbour incident, and contrary to what Hinamori had proclaimed in her fury, Hitsugaya still felt neither gratitude nor remorse. Instead, he had been plotting.

He started the day face down in bed, and stayed there.

At one point in time in the morning, Hinamori had walked into his room. 'You're being a total brat,' she informed him.

'Good day to you too,' he grumbled through the pillow, voice dripping with venom. He heard her huff, probably blowing bangs out of her eyes, then heard her spin around and slam the door behind her.

_Perfect._

He propped himself up on his elbows, just to check that she had really gone and wasn't actually tearing up his stuff in a fit of rage and mutiny. Hitsugaya extricated himself from his duvet and pulled an extra pullover on as he stuffed some loose change into his pockets. He stopped to grab his boots from where he'd stashed them under his bed, then stood on the bed and cranked the window open.

When the window was sufficiently wide open, he lifted himself up onto the sill where he sat to lace up his shoes before dropping out onto the grass on the other side.

Hitsugaya hit the ground moving. From the previous day of fake sulking, he knew he had perhaps two or three hours before anyone would think to venture into his room and coax him out. So, he decided, that he needed to have accomplished _something_ before all hell broke loose in the Hinamori household, or he would have wasted this opportunity he had painstakingly created for himself.

He already knew where to start. He had made his way to the market square, and was currently squinting in the late morning light at the newsstand. He picked out a copy of the local paper, paid for it, and plopped down on a nearby bench to read any and all articles there were on the two visiting Magicians. Given what a big deal their arrival had been, Hitsugaya suspected they had been covered multiple times in the crummy old newspaper. He did also try not to get his hopes up, but this was the paper that regularly published pieces on useless things like the dwindling toad population on slow news days. They were bound to snap up and over-publish anything as sensational as this – talks of the uprising were old news by now.

Hitsugaya was not disappointed. There were three whole articles on the visiting Magicians, including the front-page headline. It turned out the Magicians were on some kind of diplomatic visit, which involved lots of chumming up to the royal family and sightseeing. If they used to come every other year or so, Hitsugaya wondered, what sightseeing was there to do? Surely they had seen it all, or perhaps after ten years they would be drowning in nostalgia. He doubted it.

Cair was hardly impressive to the repeat customer, though. If this Aizen guy really was a hot contender for the throne, it was probably all part of his toadying to the King.

On the next page, there was even an outline of the Magicians' itinerary. They would spend the day touring landmarks, apparently, which made things exceedingly easy for him.

If there was one place on the wave beaten island that the King couldn't help but show off, it was the waterfall. Its crystal clear waters were always a cool icy blue, an exact mirror of the sky above. The basalt rock of the waterfall glittered in the sunlight, almost as if it had been touched by magic, blanketed in a constant shroud of mist and spray from the small waterfall that ran from the island's only mountain, which was more like a hill. In the evening, the low-hanging sun cast rainbows through the mist, creating a perfect picturesque spot. The overhang was deep, and Hitsugaya had ventured behind the veil of water many times into the dim recess of the rock over the years.

The entire waterfall was deserted, despite it being a weekend. There was a guard stationed by the entrance to the path that lead to the waterfall park, and Hitsugaya smirked. The bigwigs were coming today, and they were keeping guests out until the visit was over. The path wound in from northeast; it was overgrown with vegetation that carpeted the rocks like velvet. Instead of using the path, Hitsugaya began picking his way in from the abandoned lighthouse by the eastern coast.

He dropped off onto a ledge under the lighthouse, which tapered off into a narrow path that spiralled down the side of the embarrassingly low cliff. It would lead down to the eastern shore by the sea stack that used to be an arch, where a deep but simple cave lay. The back of the cave connected with the waterfall, in a small and shallow canyon slightly further inland. From the moment he entered the cave, the sound of running water permeated the air, reverberating and echoing in the barely-lit cave. The rock glimmered with the same sheen of dewdrop-adorned morning grass – water from the river. The air was fresh and clean, moist but not stale. When he was eight, Hitsugaya had once dreamt of moving into this cave, but had quickly abandoned the idea upon discovering that it became partially submerged in the high tide.

Hitsugaya emerged from the back of the cave behind the basin of the waterfall. Carefully, he climbed out to the front, damp and cold from the mist. Voices echoed and carried over the waterfall, meaning he was either right about the King wanting to show off his precious waterfall, or he wasn't the only one around who had a bone to pick with the Magicians. If it was the latter, Hitsugaya decided, then his competition wasn't exactly very stealthy.

He hopped off the rocks and onto the gravel path of the park, where it was dry and out of range of the waterfall's spray.

He wondered how the royal escorts would react to his blatant trespassing – but it was too late to do anything but play by ear. It was their faux pas, at any rate.

And as it turned out, he needn't have worried about the royal escorts at all.

Two men strolled calmly down the path, flanked by three escorts. One had silver hair and a ridiculously angular face with a murderously pointy chin, while the other had a slick of brown hair and a condescendingly fake smile. Both were unnecessarily tall. The silver-haired one trailed several steps behind the brown-haired one, and Hitsugaya suspected that the willowy silver-haired man was the apprentice. He wondered if he could make them mysteriously tumble into the river and wash out to sea, though on second thought he realised that would accomplish exactly nothing.

When he stepped into the path of the Magicians, he barely had time to register the looks of mixed horror and fury on the escorts' faces before the three of them collapsed like sacks of bricks. He swore he saw the air shimmer with powerful magic.

_Don't panic, don't panic, breathe_ , he repeated to himself. _Don't fall into the river_.

Ichimaru's mouth was pinched into a frown of disapproval, and Aizen looked like he was still auditioning for best greaseball. He was succeeding, as far as Hitsugaya was concerned.

He blinked, and found that in that split-second, the Magicians had closed the distance he had attempted to maintain.

_Shit._

The way they had incapacitated the three escorts so effortlessly was really disturbing, and he was beginning to panic – could feel the fear bubbling and overflowing in him, threatening to cut off his instincts. He couldn't let it. Not here, not now. He was beginning to think this was a mistake, but it was too late.

_What on earth were you thinking, confronting the two most powerful men around alone?_

He'd thought they were dumb, because the whole world was falling around at their feet.

'Avoiding eye contact, are we?' Ichimaru remarked. His voice sent shivers down his spine, and he tried to ignore the alarm bells ringing in his head.

_Run_ , he admonished himself, but he was rooted the spot, frozen in – was it fear? He didn't really know.

A spindly hand shot out and grabbed his chin, forcing him to look up – the fingers were eerily cold, and fingernails dug into his skin. Against his better judgment, he instinctively squeezed his eyes shut and contemplated biting the Magician.

'Now,' Ichimaru continued, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening on his stroll. 'Are you a Seer, or a Clairvoyant, hmm?'

'Try again, foxface,' he ground out, still not daring to open his eyes. Hurtling into the future of this creep was the last thing Hitsugaya wanted to do, seeing how wanted posters of Ichimaru would soon paper the town.

'Wait, Gin,' Aizen said, sickeningly smoothly, and the apprentice released him. 'Well, well, well,' he said in Hitsugaya's direction.

_Well, well, well?_ Hitsugaya scorned. _I could throw him down a well. I would do it thrice._

Aizen's next words were like ice, and knocked the air out of him.

'I never thought we'd meet again, Hitsugaya.'

Again? He'd never met this man before. Hell, he'd never even _heard_ of his existence before.

He snapped his head up, eyes blazing with fury. 'So it was you!' Hitsugaya accused. 'You stole my memories, _Aizen_.'

The champion greaseball laughed, as if he'd just heard the best joke of the century. When he finally regained his composure, he returned to exuding condescension. 'Every bit as intelligent and sharp as I expected,' Aizen said, almost admiringly, with a slight touch of disappointment. 'What a pity. Take him along, Gin.'

He whirled around, but not before a hand touched his forehead, and he dropped to the ground as the world grew dark.

_God, I'm such an idiot_.

.

.

Hitsugaya woke to find himself in a very luxurious bed.

To be more accurate, he woke to find himself tied to a very luxurious bed. The walls were richly panelled with polished wood, as was the floor, which was also adorned with an expensive rug. Hideous curtains hung from the window, and in the opposite wall was a heavy-set, decoratively carved door with a brass handle. It certainly wouldn't have hurt for them to give him a pillow.

A quick look out the window told him he was near the palace grounds. It was probably a spare room in the accomodation for the two toadying Magicians during their stay.

As if to affirm his superior deduction skills, the door swung open soundlessly and Aizen stepped in, just as he was tentatively pulling his right hand away from the very shiny bedpost.

'Ah,' the man said with the air of a highly satisfied loon. 'Restrained movement is the simplest but most effective method of intimidation, don't you think?'

Hitsugaya rolled his eyes. 'Where did you put my shoes?' he retorted as brazenly as he could manage.

'That is of little interest now,' Aizen said with a blasé wave of his hand. 'I can't let someone like you get in the way of my plans to take over Cair, can i?'

'Oh, I see,' Hitsugaya said simply. 'Megalomania.'

'I wouldn't quite call it that,' Aizen replied smoothly.

_Oh?_ Hitsugaya raised an eyebrow.

'It's just a simple, primal hunger. Surely you understand?' In the short, stunned silence that followed, Aizen smiled benignly.

'I can still hate you with or without my boots, so I guess that's okay.' Hitsugaya said at length, waggling one socked foot at him.

It seemed to silence Aizen for a split second. He sighed, and turned around. Before leaving, he said, 'I'll send Gin to deal with your insolence,' then the door slammed shut and Hitsugaya heard the lock click.

Hitsugaya's plan wasn't to break out of this unexpected kidnapping quite yet. Of course, at the moment it was quite impossible, so he had shelved the idea and begun thinking. He was baffled by how easy it was to ruffle Aizen's feathers with a little impudence here and there peppered with a dash of scathing sarcasm, and decided to use it to his advantage. He was going to dig out the truth from these two psychopaths, he decided, since it was obvious they were the ones who had the answers to his questions about his past.

It was a dangerous game, he knew, and he had everything to lose – but everything to gain – so he would play by their rules for now.

In the meantime, he might as well drive them nuts while he was at it.

The sun was setting by the time Ichimaru had finally decided to deal with his insolence, as Aizen had so eloquently phrased it.

It seemed that the evil duo had spent the afternoon updating their kidnapping modus operandi, because the first thing Ichimaru did was release one of Hitsugaya's hands.

'You can do the rest yourself,' the Magician muttered, stashing his pocketknife.

With a scowl, Hitsugaya twisted around and began unpicking the knot around his other wrist, all the while watching Ichimaru carefully.

'We've changed our minds,' Ichimaru said casually. 'You're free to use the house, as long as you remain civil. Now when you're ready, I think a demonstration would be much quicker. Go unlock the door.'

Hitsugaya stood up warily, although plots to run the settlement into chaotic ruin were already lining up in his mind. Cautiously, he flicked the brass lock open.

'Now open it,' Ichimaru commanded.

With much trepidation, Hitsugaya placed his hand on the polished doorknob and immediately drew back. The momentary contact with the doorknob sent a shockwave of pain coursing up his arm, and though the doorknob itself looked innocently normal, a quick look told him that his right hand now had a minor burn. It would heal in a couple of days, but Magicians were such assholes and he supposed that was one thing that would never get better. The world was unfathomable – take the psychopaths, bless them with unrivaled power and sickeningly ambitious desires. It might have been the other way around – that all this power had driven the Magicians to egotistic madness.

'What exactly is this supposed to mean?' Hitsugaya demanded. 'If you're trying to cultivate Stockholm's, I assure you this is not the way.'

He wasn't sure how much longer he could suppress the need to curl up in a corner and hide, while keeping up this bravado.

'Let me explain the rules' Ichimaru explained. 'All the doors and windows in this house have been charmed. If you touch any doorknob or window handle, you get burnt. If you open a door or window, you get a migraine. Of course, you are free to pass through open doorways. Simple and lovely, isn't it?'

Hitsugaya scowled. The number of viable excape plans he had was quickly dwindling.

'In exchange for you abiding by the rules of the house,' Ichimaru continued, 'Neither Aizen nor I will touch your memories.'

'Oh, what fair play,' Hitsugaya drawled. 'Such generosity. What, may I ask, other than your paper-thin honesty, is stopping you from breaking your end of the deal since I won't remember it anyway?'

'Take it or leave it,' Ichimaru said, not quite addressing the question at hand, and he turned the doorknob with ease. Of course they knew to immunise themselves from the wards they'd placed around the house, Hitsugaya realised. 'One more thing-' Ichimaru whipped his pocketknife out, extending its retractable blade with a swift, practised movement. Carelessly, he tossed it over his shoulder, where it spun, perfectly balanced, and buried its tip into the dense wood of the door.

The effect was immediate. A stabbing pain shot through Hitsugaya's skull, and it took all his self-restraint to not crouch on the floor and clutch his head.

Ichimaru chuckled mirthlessly. 'If I were you, little boy, I wouldn't go around breaking windows and doors.'

Satisfied, the man turned and left soundlessly. He wondered how Hinamori would react if he told her what total monsters her idol and his apprentice were.

Ichimaru had left the door ajar, and once his head cleared, Hitsugaya took it as an invitation to wreak havoc. He slipped out into the corridor, which was just as lavish as the room he had just left. A thick carpet muffled his footsteps, sinking down slightly under his feet, and he brushed his fingers curiously over the textured wallpaper. The air had a sharp stinging coldness to it. Right outside the door to the room he had just exited, was none other than Aizen, and he was immediately on edge – he could hear his own heartbeat echo loudly in his entire being as a beating drum threatening to destroy the façade that was his forced calm, could hear the blood rushing to his head as a relentless tide threatening to erode his feigned confidence away into shreds. The man was leaning serenely against the wall, as if he had been patiently waiting for him all this while.

'Oh, you, just the lunatic I wanted to see,' Hitsugaya said sourly.

Aizen's composure was visibly rankled. 'Just because I decided not to waste any of my magic on depleting your memories and intelligence, does not mean I won't hit you in the head with a blunt object.'

'If I'm such a bother, why even keep me alive? Don't you have your hands full cosying up to the King? Have you gotten him to disclose his favourite brand of soap yet? One step closer to the throne for the mighty Aizen.'

'I'm not foolish enough to dispose of the proverbial golden goose that just handed itself over to me,' Aizen said calmly. 'I know you're a Clairvoyant.'

'Oh yes, that makes sense, you kidnap me, I work for you unquestioningly. You must be underestimating my morals. Shouldn't it be easier for you to magic me into oblivion rather than clock me over the head? Wouldn't want you to break a nail.'

While his mouth was busy showering Aizen wih meaningless words, he was quickly scanning his surroundings and memorising the layout of the corridor. He counted four rooms, and supposed there were more on the other side of the area that this corridor opened up to. His gaze landed on a small black device perched on a tiny table along the wall.

He let his attention linger for a second too long, and Aizen had noticed him staring.

'Lovely cordless phone, don't you think?' his said mellifluously with a wide smile.

'Don't be daft,' Hitsugaya said automatically. 'Who ever heard of a cordless telephone?'

'Technology and magic can achieve far more than you think, you fool.' Aizen twirled the receiver in one hand, and Hitsugaya could almost picture a hyena by his side, though the hyena would definitely be less threatening. 'It only transmits the voices of Magicians, and it's been rigged like the doorknobs, just in case you decide to try anything funny.'

He wished the Magicians were as dumb as doorknobs.

'Okay then,' Hitsugaya agreed amicably. 'Let me ask you something not funny at all. Ten years ago, you were here in Cair. Ten years ago, someone placed a block on the King's memories. Ten years ago, someone placed a block on _my_ memories. Coincidence?'

'I'm not obliged to answer your questions,' he deflected him with dubious reasoning, and Hitsugaya glared. It seemed that if he wanted to wheedle answers from the tight-lipped man, he would have to annoy him a touch more.

.

.

Ichigo was growing restless. He hadn't heard from Hitsugaya in four whole days, and just watching the moon morph into a slimmer and slimmer crescent each night not unlike a gruesome countdown to his fate was frighteningly stressful.

On the morning of the fifth day since they had last met, Ichigo chanced upon a discarded copy of the day's paper. It was slightly soggy from being tossed around on the street, but was otherwise perfectly fine, so he folded it up and stashed it in a pocket for him to read later on. When he did find the chance to, the sun was high in the sky and a film of grey haze had cast over the clear sky, the faint smell of things that shouldn't be burning burning anyway permeating the usually clean sea air.

His stomach flipped. This had to be the fire Hitsugaya had talked about from the "future", which he guessed had become the present over the course of the past few days. He tried to push aside the alarming sensation of urgency that threatened to undo his rationality, and unfolded the paper apprehensively.

He skipped over a long article expounding on the Magicians' diplomatic relations, and over another waxing on about the differing speeds of erosion at the various coasts. He was skimming a magnificently insignificant piece on the puffin population when a small article in the corner of the back page caught his eye.

_**Boy, 14, missing for over 48 hours.** _

Now, Ichigo didn't personally know many fourteen-year-old boys, but if there was one who was likely to disappear without a trace, he would put all his money on this one half-crazy, half-desperate boy in pursuit of his identity and reconciliation with his unknown past. The last time they had met, Hitsugaya seemed patient and willing to play the waiting game with his own venture, but Ichigo knew better than anyone else the impulses of hotheaded youngsters driven by determination and frustration and helplessness – he had seen all three of these emotions heavy and conflicting in the younger boy's eyes in the two times they had locked gazes. Something must have cropped up – an opportunity too good to pass up, a crisis too desperate to ignore – and he plunged in headfirst.

Ichigo realised that he, too, was about to do the same.

He was almost completely sure Hitsugaya had gone after the two Magicians. There had to be _something_ he could do to get him out of the mess he had most definitely whipped up, and it didn't involve sitting around doing nothing and hiding. Ichigo decided that since he would be caught eventually, he needed to head out and help Hitsugaya – he only hoped he could accomplish something before the prophesied lynching, which he really was not looking forward to.

Ichigo discarded the newspaper and stood abruptly, sending a thin, grey cat sprinting down the stone-paved alley. He pulled his hood over his bright orange hair and set off, purely based on gut feeling, towards the source of the fire.

.

.

By the third day, Hitsugaya had exhausted several escape plans, one of which involved lying in wait by the front door until someone opened it from outside then bolting out. It had ended spectacularly, with him kicking Ichimaru in the face. If he had had his boots, he was sure the man would have had a jaw realignment by now. Hopefully, by running through his sillier ideas all at once, the Magicians would begin letting their guard down and start to underestimate the genius of his grand scheme.

Hitsugaya had concluded a long time ago that Aizen would likely not do anything drastically damaging, or he'd have to explain to the King why the place was wrecked and he was disposing of the body of a boy. That, and it appeared that he wanted him to be some kind of obliging human crystal ball. With this in mind, he began plotting to drive him moderately mad.

Ichimaru had been away on some errand since the previous evening, so now was his best chance for as fair a fight as he could get. He had spent the early morning wandering around all the rooms open to him, subtly rearranging things. He turned every other book in the shelves upside down, and placed a few with the spine facing inwards. He slipped wads of paper underneath chair legs to make them shaky, and replaced a vase of flowers in the entrance hallway with an air freshener from the bathroom. He turned an armchair around so it faced the wall instead of the fireplace, and for good measure, he dragged a wastepaper basket to the centre of the hallway. With luck, at least something would get on Aizen's nerves enough for him to power up his ego and start rhapsodising about his future on the throne and let his guard down enough for Hitsugaya to demand answers and actually receive them. He was busy tying the tassles that trimmed the curtains into knots when he heard a door open.

_The megalomaniac's awake_ , he thought. _Action time_.

He dragged a high stool into the kitchen and positioned it by the ice box, then lay low and counted off a minute – Aizen should be near by now. Peering around the counter, he nearly snickered when he saw Aizen's forehead wrinkle up as he noticed the curtain tassles and the books.

Noisily, he climbed onto the stool and wrenched the box's door open, and promptly began looking through its contents, loudly dropping things to the floor. His heart was slamming in his chest louder than the condiments crashing to the ground.

Aizen was instantly enraged. 'What is going on?' He strode menacingly towards the kitchen.

While there was still a respectable distance between them, Hitsugaya looked over his shoulder for an instant. 'You missed this door – look, no scalding metal, no debilitating headaches.' As if to demonstrate his point, he swung the door to the ice box liberally, pleased to see the ice inside begin to melt and drip onto a tray of meat.

'And what do you think you're doing? Are you trying some kind of heist?' Aizen's expression was stone cold even though his ears were bright red as he gestured at the disorderly state of the borrowed house that was sure to sour the King's favour if it was discovered.

_Wow, this worked better than I thought_.

Hitsugaya smirked nonchalently from where he stood on the stool, speaking fast because the Magician was almost in point-blank range. 'How about "simple, primal hunger"?' and against all better judgment, he beaned the man with a head of soggy lettuce.

The stool was swept from under his feet, and Hitsugaya went crashing to the ground.

He nearly panicked then, but managed – somehow – to swallow it. If he lost his wits now, he would lose everything. He scrambled up, nearly tripping on the lettuce as it rolled back, shedding leaves as it went.

'What does it take,' Aizen hissed, not unlike a cat that had been sat on, 'to make you stop behaving like a five-year-old?'

'Answers,' Hitsugaya said, as calmly as one could in this sort of situation.

Aizen loomed over him, amusement evident in his posture and crooked smile. 'Oh? What makes you think you'll get them?'

Hitsugaya stepped back, deftly avoiding the lettuce. He knew exactly what Aizen wanted far more than he wanted the truth – power, sovereignty, deference, submission. Hitsugaya took a gamble.

'I'll stay,' he said softly.

'What?'

'If you tell me everything about my past, who I am, what you've destroyed, everything, I'll stay. I'll work for you. Whatever.'

Aizen's smile widened, and Hitsugaya decided that he wouldn't look too far out of place at the head of a pack of wild hyenas. Perhaps a little more hair and a little less hair product would do the trick.

'I see you've come to your senses,' Aizen said most placatingly. Hitsugaya thought he might throw up any time, but nodded as if he didn't notice how grossly manipulating this future heir to the throne was. He was beginning to contemplate migration.

Aizen stepped forward, and he resisted the urge to step back and maybe kick him in the shins, though he did instinctively shrink down nervously. 'Before I tell you anything,' Aizen said, 'I want a token of your loyalty. Tell my future now, Clairvoyant boy.'

Hitsugaya was sorely tempted to point out the dubiousness of using the words "future" and "now" one after the other.

He closed his eyes and tried to steady his breathing. He found his hands instinctively by his temples – as if the position was somehow comforting.

'Just a small test,' Aizen interrupted his efforts to gather the courage to leap unwittingly into the future of a potentially pathologically unsound person. 'Tell me what happens later today – it can't be that hard, can it?'

Hitsugaya let the man's taunts bounce off him, pushing distracting thoughts away.

_Today?_ He didn't have anything to use as a reference. Maybe he would have to improvise. Perhaps he would lie to Aizen.

He concentrated on what little information he had that would take him to _today_. There wasn't much to go by – all he had was the unusually clear sky streaked with a few wispy cirrus clouds to the east, and Aizen's current outfit, which was a ridiculous ensemble with way too much white.

He only hoped he would recover quickly enough to follow through with his escape plan, which was far more dramatic and bombastic than he would have liked.

When he was ready, he opened his eyes and, with much less hesitation than before, raised his gaze to meet Aizen's.

He was met with a petrifying intensity, a pair of cold brown eyes that seemed to embody the greed of the world with its bloodshot corners, and crazed desire with its ragged irises that gave him a bestial, thirsty stare, yet they were so devoid of emotion they were bottomless pits of darkness, frigid and paralysing and demonic. Whatever kindness and compassion and warmth Hinamori had raved about from magazine articles were nonexistent. Hitsugaya felt his breath catch in his throat a split second before the fall through time claimed him.

.

He tumbled, breathlessly, into the future.

The late evening sky was a flaming orange, deep and scorched by the descending sun; the cirrus clouds from the morning had blown westwards over the course of the day, and now they glowed golden, bathed in the glaring light of sunset. Crepuscular rays fanned out with dimmed grandeur, almost as if they had been painted on in dilute watercolours that bled out into the shadowy grey-blue of twilight.

He looked down quickly and was mildly surprised to find that he had succeeded in travelling less than twelve hours into the future – that, or Aizen had abandoned all standards of hygiene and hadn't bothered to change his clothes. He couldn't quite pinpoint where this was, but he could hear the faint, calming washing of the tide onto the beach in the distance.

In the dimness, he stopped short when he noticed the moon – a barely discernible sliver of gleaming light – and a creeping suspicion that this was the same moon he had seen when he met Ichigo began tugging at the edge of his mind. This suspicion was confirmed when the same acrid stench of the blaze carried in the slow breeze, stifling his breath.

He looked down towards the ground, dread building up within him, and took an involuntary step back at what he saw.

On the ground, a hooded figure lay face down, and a flash of bright orange from under the hood quickly told him who it was. A short distance away, he noticed as his blood ran cold, a smaller figure with a mop of untamed white hair laid motionless, and he knew with one glance that he was seeing himself.

_What the hell is this?_

Despite his personal panic, he could feel Aizen swell with the satisfaction of victory, and the polaric contradiction of emotions sent his mind spinning away from the vision.

_No – what was going on?_

He looked around wildly, fighting the urge to clutch his head, and spotted the old, disused lighthouse to the northeast of where they were in the growing darkness.

_Why are we here?_

He tried for a deep, calming breath of the salty sea air, but instead began choking on a lungful of toxicity – it smelt like a mix of burning wood and plastic, and tasted even worse.

_God, that fire is going to be the death of me. Why is it that we're literally surrounded by a vast expanse of water and this fire keeps burning_?

He was beginning to piece together the order of events. First, a week ago, Ichigo had seen into the past of the King, and spent a week on the run, undetected by the police. Next were the events of the vision he'd had in the back alley of the marketplace, followed by the terrible scene at the southern shore, and lastly the events of his current vision. Throughout all three visions, the fire blazed fiercely. Somewhere along the way, Ichimaru had disappeared from the scene – and he remembered that if they hadn't already, wanted posters of Ichimaru would be papering the town soon. It was late afternoon in that vision, he reasoned, so between now and then, something explosive was brewing.

It was strange, knowing what the future held, and knowing how the present was rapidly catching up to it; it was nauseating, knowing how helpless he was to change _anything_.

Between his confusion and the crushing weight of incapability, he hadn't realised when he'd lost his hold on the future and slipped back to the present, where he found himself crumpled weakly to the floor, the kitchen spinning and swimming around him threateningly. This sensation was becoming uncomfortably familiar, he thought.

Hitsugaya reminded himself to breathe, and slowly lifted his head from his sweaty palms to gauge Aizen's reaction.

The man stood over him, evidently pleased. 'What did you see?' he asked coolly.

'I…'

Hitsugaya paused, pursing his lips together nervously. He couldn't exactly tell Aizen what he just saw, and so settled on a half-truth woven from his previous vision of the marketplace.

He swallowed, still not quite recovered from the dizziness. 'You're in the marketplace,' he said. 'Walking. And…' he paused for another gulp of air to clear his head.

'And?'

'And there are people,' he continued slowly and cautiously, 'they were setting something up. It looked like something big was happening – and it was in the royal colours,' he said quietly.

Aizen frowned. 'Is that all?'

Hitsugaya nodded, keeping his gaze downwards.

'Very well,' Aizen sighed, and all of a sudden, his demeanour was completely different. He crouched down to Hitsugayas level, with one arm extended, presumably to help him up, and as Hitsugaya reached one unstable hand out to take the invitation, the man smiled magnanimously. 'I will need to train you up, but for someone so young, you are indeed skilled,' he flattered, though Hitsugaya couldn't quite tell if he was being sarcastic.

He let the Magician pull him to his feet, and once Aizen's grip on his wrist slackened, he called out, 'Wait- you promised to-'

'Oh yes I did,' Aizen agreed with a polished smile. 'But perhaps you would like to rest first?'

'No, I'm well enough,' Hitsugaya insisted as he fumbled his way unsteadily towards the threshold after Aizen. He couldn't afford to rest now – couldn't risk Aizen tampering with his head any more. He cursed as he tripped over the lettuce. He needed to get out _fast_ if he wanted even a chance at figuring out what kind of chaos would break loose later that day.

The Magician's icy smile widened, and Hitsugaya began wondering, not for the first time, if he had walked himself into an inescapable trap. 'I like your resilience,' Aizen said. 'Follow me.'

He trailed along as Aizen led the way down the corridor to the finely upholstered lounge, sliding his fingers across the wall as he walked, as if the contact was a source of stability. As they neared the corner, he pulled his sleeves over his hands and let his arms drop to his side.

Aizen eased himself into a plush armchair decorated with a distastefully tassled cushion that didn't match the knotted curtains. It sagged as only old furniture did, but held up steadily without a sound. He leaned back into the rich velvet and steepled his fingers coolly, waiting expectantly as Hitsugaya shuffled across the carpet, looking for all the world as if he was wondering if he could work up enough static to zap the madman.

'Sit,' he commanded.

Hitsugsya did not want to sit. He wanted to set the whole house on fire and _run_. But for now, he was supposed to be Aizen's newest lackey, so he nervously lowered himself into another ridiculously fancy and unnecessarily gaudy armchair by a side table which had an air purifier spewing lavender essence into the room.

'Shall I tell you a story?' Aizen asked, probably rhetorically seeing as he didn't bother waiting for a response. He has assumed the posture of someone in command – completely at ease, with one leg comfortably crossed over the other. If there was ever a physical manifestation of "inflated ego", Hitsugaya was sure it was seated in the armchair across from him.

'Fourteen years ago, during a harsh winter night on a little weatherbeaten island in the Celtic Sea, the royal family had their first child. The child was born weak and sickly – it was thought to be due to the fact that neither the King nor the Queen was young – and local doctors were helpless to save the young prince's life. Desperate, the palace summoned for a powerful Magician from abroad, but despite the Magician's prompt arrival and valiant efforts, the prince passed away before his first birthday. Nevertheless, the royal family felt indebted to the Magician for his generosity and benevolence in traversing the sea to aid a foreign family to whom he had absolutely no obligation. In years to come, the King and Queen of this little Celtic island would frequently invite this Magician as a distinguished diplomatic guest to special occasions as an expression of their gratitude.

'Of course, this is a story well known within the palace, but little spoken of without.' Aizen concluded with a flourish.

Hitsugaya scowled. 'And am I to suppose _you_ are the magnanimous Magician in question?'

Aizen shook his head and tutted, as if he were rebuking a preschooler. 'Your lack of faith in my humanity is frankly insulting.'

'And,' Hitsugaya added with a touch of vexation, 'this does not appear to have _anything_ to do with me.'

'Ah, but that is where you are mistaken. This has _everything_ to do with you, Hitsugaya.'

Hitsugaya flinched, uneasy that Aizen had known his name – that this man had known him before.

Something was wrong. If what Aizen had said was the truth, nothing added up.

'Let me guess,' Hitsugaya said. 'Some part, or a large portion, of this story has been fabricated and impressed upon the royal family by a certain munificent Magician.'

'Very good,' Aizen oozed contented complacency. 'Since you're so smart, maybe I'll do the same to you, too,' he added in a tone not unlike as if he were commenting disinterestedly in the weather, shedding any previous egotistic satisfaction like an ephemeral veil. 'I could wipe your memories and replace them with artificial ones, just like I did to the King and the Queen all those years ago, and nobody would remember that any of this happened. What do you think?'

'I think that since you've already decided to place yet another block on my memories,' Hitsugaya reasoned, 'you should just tell me everything before you do it again. I kept my end of the bargain, you know.' Aizen must have been itching to gloat to someone, anyone, about the upcoming success of his fourteen-year-long plot, for he fell easily to his goading.

'Very well. All the more a fitting ending for your pursuit for the truth, hmm?'

Hitsugaya inclined his head slightly to the side, a gesture which Aizen took as an invitation to continue.

'As you have guessed, I removed the King's and Queen's memories of their child's birth, and later relayed to them the account that has since been passed through the palace.'

'But why?' Hitsugaya interrupted.

'Why, you ask? Simple – a man cannot usurp the throne so easily when there is an heir, can he? So I simply removed the healthy young prince along with the King's and Queen's memories, and left an impressive impression on the palace. I grieved with them the supposed death of their child, I took charge of the burial, I advised them to think of appointing an heir instead of trying for more children. I planted the seed – it took fourteen years, but now look at how splendidly it turned out. Time alone has brought the royal family of Cair to my feet.'

Hitsugaya was horrified. 'You killed the baby?'

Aizen let out a sharp bark of laughter, sending chills down his spine. 'No, no, of course not. I took the child, I named him, I raised him, I waited until he was forgotten, then I left him, with memories of nothing other than the name I gave him, at the edge of the woods for fate to claim.'

He could feel the blood drain from his own face. 'No…'

_This has everything to do with you._

'Yes, Hitsugaya,' Aizen said as he leaned in, and Hitsugaya adamantly looked away. 'How do you like the name I gave you?

He brought one hand to his temple. 'No- It's not- I- You're lying,' he accused, opprobriously groundlessly and stutteringly.

'I'm not lying, you fool,' Aizen spat. ' _You_ are the dead Crown Prince, and perhaps when I'm done with you, you really will be dead.' At that, he paused to stroke his chin, seemingly reconsidering his brash decision to murder someone who had recently pledged loyalty. 'Or, perhaps when the throne is mine,' Aizen postulated, 'you could rule by my side.'

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried for a deep calming breath. _Don't listen to what he's saying. Doesn't matter if he's lying or if he's telling the truth – you can't fall apart now – not now, not after coming so far._

Hitsugaya raised an eyebrow, running solely on the _Get out now, panic later_ mantra. 'How are you going to win the nation's trust with a wealthy arsenal of heinous crimes under your belt and the resurrected ghost of a dead prince by your side? Surely someone's going to find something out,' he pointed out. He wasn't sure how he could still breathe evenly, how he could still speak calmly, how he could still move without trembling.

_Stay calm. Stay in control._

Aizen actually threw his head back and laughed. 'Don't be naïve. Once the King and Queen have declared me the heir to the throne, they will both mysteriously disappear, not that anyone who matters will remember. You, my dear boy, are the first and the last to know of my grand scheme.'

_The first and last, or so he thinks._

This time, it was Hitsugaya's turn to laugh. 'I don't think so,' he said upon promptly regaining his composure, which threatened to crumble again. He couldn't fall into the same trap he'd led Aizen into, he warned himself. _Don't let your guard down. Don't think you've won the fight yet._

'What is so funny?' Aizen demanded.

Hitsugaya drew his left hand from where he had kept it concealed behind his back, extending his upturned palm to the Magician.

Aizen's froze, his expression of shock and perplexion almost comical, amplified by the moment of shocked silence that passed. 'What is the meaning of this?' he roared, completely losing his cool.

Hitsugaya smiled smugly. With a flourish, he dropped the object he had been holding and watched with immense satisfaction as it smouldered on the expensive rug. Almost as if it had been perfectly timed, the sounds of fists hammering on the front door echoed through the house, and his smile twisted demonically.

'Thank you, Sir Aizen, for executing my escape plan _perfectly_.'


	4. Part III

Hitsugaya watched in a strange mixture of terror and fascination as Aizen's expression rapidly shifted from bemusement to comprehension.

The cotton of his left sleeve, which he had pulled over his hand, had been scorched through and his entire palm was badly burnt – if he looked away, he swore his hand really felt as if it were literally on fire. He desperately tried to blink away the haze of the pain.

The cordless telephone lay on the rug, buzzing slightly with static and smoking like a small campfire, though it was definitely still transmitting.

'Hello?' A tinny voice asked from the floor.

Aizen grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him none too gently as he spoke. 'Who did you call? When did you do this?' he demanded.

He instinctively brought his arms up protectively in front of his face. The pounding on the door outside intensified the pounding of his own head, and he almost couldn't find the breath to answer.

'The Royal Police emergency hotline,' Hitsugaya said smugly, almost proud of how well it had worked. 'I believe they heard everything, or at least enough to be really pissed off with you. It must have been quite an astoundingly incriminating confession.'

From the other side of the door, a voice Hitsugaya didn't recognise had started shouting. 'Aizen Sosuke and Ichimaru Gin, open up!'

With every hit that landed on the hard polished wood of the door, it became harder for him to concentrate on not falling over amidst the blinding dizziness and the dull stabbing pain that was building up in his cranium.

'Open up, or we'll break the door down!' the police yelled.

Hitsugaya was doubled up, both hands clutching either side of his head, as if it would do anything to alleviate the side effects of the powerful magic protecting the house. Though his vision was swimming and blurring dangerously, he could see Aizen smirking over him, seemingly revelling in his suffering – which he evidently thought was amusing.

'You brought this upon yourself,' the Magician said laconically, arrogant malice in his voice.

Through gritted teeth, Hitsugaya ground out, 'Bring it on. I've been ready for this all my life.'

Yet no degree of readiness would have prepared him for the moment when the door burst open in an explosion of polished splinters and twisted hinges.

Everything turned a hot, blinding white – the pain in his hand dwindled and numbed in comparison – and somewhere along the way, he wasn't quite sure, he had fallen soundlessly to the ground, teeth clenched so hard his jaw was starting to ache.

This was definitely worse than he had imagined, but he didn't have a choice – it was the only plan he had that had even the slightest chance of succeeding in getting him out alive and with the answers he came for. The surrounding noises of people shouting outside and wood falling from the doorway had faded to a distant, underwater echo beneath the impossible heat of the migraine burning the backs of his eyes, and his senses were only just starting to return to him.

He struggled to pull his heavy, pounding head upright and prop his body up with one elbow, still awkwardly curled up on the floor by the fireplace. Despite the terrible headache and his alarming lack of balance, he forced his eyes open.

Aizen stood amidst the chaotic mess that was the threshold, smiling genially. Hitsugaya wondered how many hours he spent in front of a mirror practising that. 'Good morning, gentlemen,' Aizen greeted the squad of policemen as if they hadn't just blasted open his front door with a battering ram. Was it really still only morning? It felt like an eternity had passed since he lobbed a vegetable at his kidnapper in a moment of genuine insolence. 'What can I do for you this splendid day?'

'Surrender,' one of them commanded. Hitsugaya couldn't tell how many officers they had sent. 'You are hereby under arrest for treason and criminal misuse of magic.'

'No,' Aizen refused tersely, and a ring of fire rose from nowhere to surround him, quickly reducing the rug under him to ashes.

_Here we go_ , Hitsugaya groaned. No wonder the fire smelt so awful, if everything expensive and embellished and waxed went up in flames under the influence of magic.

In that instant, Aizen's cold fury turned upon him. 'I have no need for a dirty little traitor like you. I shall dispose of you when the opportunity presents itself to me,' he said, and promptly disappeared without so much as a pop or a crackle or a shimmer. Magic was turning out to be so very different from how it was portrayed in stories.

There wasn't a better instance of the pot calling the kettle black, Hitsugaya thought as flames engulfed more and more of the room in mere seconds.

_Get up_ , a small vestige of composure within him admonished.

Air did not come easily, and his eyelids were heavy – but not as heavy as his body, and definitely not as heavy as his head, which might as well have been filled with lead for all the functioning it did at the moment. He contemplated the possibility of it all being a hallucination, or of it all being just another terrifying glimpse into the future. Soon enough it would end, and he would fall through the terrible chasm of time again and wake up fine.

Scrambled shouts from outside the raging fire jerked him back from the brink of deliriousness.

'Get the boy!' Someone was yelling. 'There was a boy in the house!'

No – _this_ was reality, his reality. He needed to get out.

He struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on something – possibly an armchair, or maybe a table, he didn't know, couldn't tell, had other things to focus his limited energy on. Even then, he swayed as if a gale were blowing, and for a moment he couldn't tell which way the door was.

He took a wobbly step forward and winced as the heat of the fire grew that much stronger. The air was thick and shimmering in a most ethereal manner, filled with magic and the occasional opalescent sparks, richly coloured as tiny fireworks. The once opulent room was rapidly coming to ruin, and Hitsugaya knew that if he didn't _run_ , it would take him with it.

Through sheer determination and willpower, he stumbled ten or so paces, growing more and more terrified of the fire as he was keenly aware of small, stray flames clinging to him, singeing the fraying ends of his nerves, and he soon found himself futilely batting away at his own sleeves in a fruitless attempt to brush the fire off him as he forged ahead.

Less than a few metres from where he had started, he caught on a fold in the rug, and the unsteady surge of adrenaline that had kept him going gave way. Hitsugaya gave a disgruntled grunt as he tried to break his fall, but was saved the jarring impact of his already injured hand slamming into the burning ground by a strong grip wrapped around his upper arm. A quick glance and an even speedier deduction told him this person had to be one of the officers who had arrived on the scene.

'Come on, kid,' his rescuer urged before lifting him off the ground and dragging him bodily towards the door, away from the carnage that he had caused.

.

.

Hitsugaya was only dimly aware of what was happening around him as he gulped down the first lungfuls of clean air since what felt like forever ago. He knew it couldn't have been more than ten minutes, but was nevertheless grateful to be out of the house before it was swallowed up by the blaze.

The warm late morning sunlight was cold against his skin, a sharp contrast from the thick, poisonous smoke that had thirstily lapped up any moisture in the air and sucked every last drop of sweat off him. It had somewhat registered that he was probably dehydrated, which explained the insurmountable dizziness plaguing him and the irresistible desire to curl up on his side and die. He soon gave up attempting to make sense of the world, which was currently swirling in faded colours around him, instead choosing to lean defeatedly against the officer who was still holding him, and hoped he wasn't too heavy. Amidst the commotion of orders being barked out and the distant approaching clatter of horses and carriages, sleep was beginning to sound more and more appealing.

Hitsugaya floated in and out of awareness, blissfully numb. At one point he opened his eyes to find he had been loaded into one of the Royal Guard's carriages and given a blanket, trundling off to an unknown destination, but he found that he couldn't quite bring himself to be bothered about the uncertainty of the future. He had, at another point in time, woken himself up by coughing violently, and on a separate occasion, woken to someone wiping what had to be a layer of soot and dirt off his face. He was entirely clueless as to the chronological order in which these windows of consciousness descended upon him, but was so completely enervated he found himself in a rare state of contentedness.

It was countless moments of interspersed sleep-addled consciousness later when his eyes flew open and he sat up abruptly, short of breath and still slightly lightheaded.

The room was mostly white, reminding him of Aizen's mild obsession with the colour. He shuddered involuntarily, but the soft bed under him, the smooth blanket drawn up to his waist, the gentle lighting, the drawn blue curtains framing the windows and the overwhelming enshrouding atmosphere of sterility were slightly calming albeit uninvitingly austere.

'Where…' he stuttered, unable to conjugate anything beyond the single syllable – and even that came out slightly slurred.

By the side of the bed was a skinny, black-haired youth who donned what was most likely medical personnel's attire. He held Hitsugaya's injured hand – which was covered in a cold salve and half-swathed in bandages and trailing the charred remains of the wrist of his sweater – in his hands and had an extremely intimidated, deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression on his face. It wasn't as if Hitsugaya could steamroller him from where he was, so he didn't quite see why the boy was so terrified.

'I- uh- um,' the nurse – nurse? Nurse-in-training? – mumbled almost inaudibly. 'Let me go get the head doctor,' he managed to say in one jumbled, nervous breath before dropping his patient's partially bandaged injury and bolting out of the room, leaving the bottle of salve uncapped and a swath of bandages rolling in his wake.

Hitsugaya was left nodding mutely and staring at the empty doorway through which the boy had fled, wondering what exactly was so horrifyingly monstrous about himself.

It wasn't long before the timid boy returned, trailing behind a gentle-looking woman who had a giant…braided…beard? As she swept through the open doorway with the aura and grace of someone of importance, she gave the nurse a sidelong look. 'Yamada, please do not leave patients' doors open,' she rebuked.

Hitsugaya swallowed all his questions about this strange lady's…beard and pretended everything was quite fine and normal as the head doctor glided to his bedside.

'I am Unohana Retsu, the head doctor here,' she introduced most unhelpfully. She paused, a displeased frown creasing up her face when she noticed the dismal unravelling state of his semi-bandaged hand, and she proceeded, unruffled, to complete the task that Yamada had abdicated.

As she worked, she spoke in a soft but firm voice. 'The police were making quite a racket, weren't they,' she commented calmly.

Hitsugaya didn't know what she expected him to say to that, so he nodded slowly.

'I expect they will be in to ask you some questions shortly, but I have heard a fair amount about the recent happenings,' Unohana said. 'I have taken the liberty of bringing in some people who probably really want to meet you.'

He bit his lower lip, rapidly piecing together some shabby excuse to present to Hinamori and her grandmother, but stopped short when Unohana opened the door to let in two people who, in hindsight, probably did want to meet him more than his adoptive family, though he definitely did not want to be anywhere near them.

Hitsugaya blanched as the King and Queen entered the room and edged cautiously to his bedside. He decided it was probably the prim, royal version of reluctant and hesitant shuffling. Instantly, he turned incredulously on the head doctor, who, failing to read his building rage, nodded encouragingly.

'I believe the Royal Guard has already sent for preparations for a royal anointing,' Unohana said. 'They sent a heralding squad to the market square not long ago.'

'No,' he said loudly, more viciously than he had intended. Behind him, he heard the Queen gasp, and out of the corner of his eye, saw her grab the King's elbow.

'Oh,' she said, and for a moment Hitsugaya wondered if he had, in a single syllable, been too offensively rude for these royal people. 'He really does look like him,' she said in awestruck wonder.

It was then that Hitsugaya noticed the eerie resemblance he bore to both the King and the Queen – the Queen's fair, almost silver hair, her willowy build; the King's prominent cheekbones, his unkempt hair.

'He really is our baby,' the Queen said, almost dreamily. 'Look at his hair, look at his eyes.'

All his life, people had said, "look at his hair, look at his eyes". He had never liked it then, and he liked it even less now.

Before anyone in the room could respond in agreement, Hitsugaya disagreed loudly, to make up in volume what he clearly didn't have in supporters.

'No,' he repeated, even more firmly than before, fixing a demanding stare on the head doctor. 'Where's my _real_ family?'

In the corner of the room, Yamada made a choked, strangled noise.

'But,' Unohana protested, 'Genetically speaking-'

Hitsugaya didn't know what to think – had he really come out of this venture even less sure of who he was than when he began? Less than a week ago, he'd been so sure that knowing his past would bring him some form of conclusion to his many questions about _who_ he was – he was so desperate for any kind of reassurance that he was more than just an abandoned child discovered by the roadside, but now that he had the answers he sought, he felt completely and absolutely destroyed. He'd been a pawn – used, manipulated, then discarded – in a despicable plot, yet now people who hadn't known of his existence for more than several hours were coveting the person they assumed him to be. How could these people think they knew him? He barely even knew himself. These royal people were no different from Aizen, he realised.

It seemed that if he wanted to stop being treated as a mere commodity, a mere means to power, he would have to defend himself. They had no right to take him from where he belonged – not that he knew where that was, yet.

'I'm nobody's goddamn prince!' he raised his voice, shouting to the room at large, not really caring which part of his outburst affronted his prim and proper audience more.

This seemed to sufficiently silence them. The moment froze in time, and Hitsugaya held his breath, unsure as to what to say to get himself out of this sticky situation, when a commotion erupted in the corridor.

Unohana was immediately on her feet, heading for the door, which burst open to admit another nurse. Heavy footfalls filled the corridor as two guards practically stampeded past, walkie-talkies blaring with static and garbled commands.

'What's going on?'

'They said they've been summoned to disperse a mob and make an arrest.'

_What?_

It couldn't be-

Pieces of the first vision he'd had that sparked off this entire crusade flashed before his closed eyes, as if it were a memory of his own, though he knew otherwise. The judging stares of the gathered crowd, the cold, damp gravel of the beach, the barely-risen moon in the early evening's flame-tinted sky, the choking sensation of smoke permeating the air, the oppressive tension of people spoiling for justice, for action, for violence, for blood.

Hitsugaya whipped around, noticing that his room was on the ground floor, and not too far from his window, a pristine white royal steed stood by its handler, and he made a split-second, highly impulsive decision.

He'd promised to help Ichigo change his future, and he'd be damned if he let this last opportunity pass him by.

Hitsugaya kicked back the covers and rolled swiftly out of bed – he was surprised he had even stayed as long as he did. He quickly crossed over to the window, slightly disappointed to be resigned to the fact that his favourite pair of shoes was probably an unidentifiable clump of ash by now, and wrenched the window open.

It was funny how he always climbed out of windows straight into trouble.

He didn't pause to look at the appalled faces of the people in the room, and dropped out onto the manicured lawn of the hospital. He hit the ground running, grabbed the reins of the horse and scrambled up its side, much to the horror of the stunned handler, who stood aghast, jaw agape.

This had to be the world's worst rescue plan ever. He was completely winging it, not to mention he had absolutely no clue how to ride a horse, though he was definitely glad the horse was already saddled and bridled.

Using his limited knowledge of the equine world gleaned from tacky hoity-toity novels, he gave the horse a gentle kick in the sides, though in his anxiety it must have been a little more violent than he imagined, for the steed took off like a rocket.

_No no no, how am I ever going to stop this thing?_

Haphazardly, he managed to steer the horse in the general direction of the southern coast, while the horse avoided obstacles on its own initiative – he was sure they'd broken all the speed limits in the land and at least one stile. The horse leapt fearlessly down an entire flight of stone steps while Hitsugaya gripped the reins and the edge of the saddle for dear life, fearing the nearing moment when he would have to stop the horse and confront a mob and grab a wanted criminal without running him over and get them out of there.

It would be the miracle of the century if he came out of this alive.

They arrived on the scene with flying gravel and colourful swearing. The crowd turned as one to gape at the horse and its dishevelled rider who, between cusses, was trying to convince the horse to slow down.

'Stop. Stop- stop- just- no-'

They galloped through the parted crowd, and Hitsugaya knew most of them were wondering what a scruffy kid was doing on one of the castle's good horses – he was wondering the exact same thing himself. He scanned the ground and finally spotted Ichigo being pinned to the ground and threatened menacingly by a large guard, right in his path.

Hitsugaya didn't have to be within hearing range to know what the man was saying, didn't have to look to know what was happening. He'd been there, even if only for a moment, only in his head, and he wouldn't wish it on anyone.

'Stop!' he roared, not entirely sure if he was addressing the horse or the guard. Possibly both. Desperately, he jerked back on the reins, certain it was the wrong thing to do when trying to stop a horse. The horse was doing its thing, adjusting its course slightly to the left to narrowly avoid the little skirmish happening on the ground. Only one thing to do, Hitsugaya thought to himself.

_Only one chance_.

He wound his bandaged fingers through the horse's thick mane for purchase, and leaned over as far right as he could go, as far low as he could go, his right arm outstretched and fingers trembling.

The guard had released his grip on the orange-haired teenager and taken a step back in alarm, and Ichigo had managed to prop himself up into a sitting position. Hitsugaya felt his fingers brush the fabric of Ichigo's jacket, and he grabbed with all his might.

Against all the odds, he had managed to sweep the older boy off the ground and whisk him away, and was currently struggling to pull him onto the horse's back.

Ichigo chuckled weakly. 'I didn't think the prince-charming-on-a-white-horse trope would ever be a part of my life,' he mumbled, a touch of amusement in his unsteady voice.

'If you're well enough to spout gibberish,' Hitsugaya said through gritted teeth, 'you're well enough to help your own heavy ass up this horse before I drop you and trample you underfoot.'

It took several attempts of their combined efforts to heft Ichigo onto the back of the moving horse, which continued unbothered by the additional weight. It took even longer for the horse to finally show some semblance of slowing down, by which time they had neared the northeast woods and were more than slightly dazed over what had just happened.

'God,' Hitsugaya said as he dismounted disgracefully from the horse and landed on the mossy ground. 'I didn't think I would survive that.'

'That,' Ichigo said, his mood the complete opposite of Hitsugaya's, 'was the most _badass_ rescue I have ever witnessed. What's next?' He looked thrilled and slightly windblown.

Hitsugaya took a deep breath. 'Next, we take down all those ridiculous banners in the market square about the royal anointing and the Crown Prince. How good an arsonist are you?'

'Ah,' Ichigo said at length, one orange eyebrow raised. 'Nobody said anything about the prince not wanting to be the prince.'

'I'm _not_ the prince.'

'Denial's not going to get you anywhere,' Ichigo pointed out. 'You need to accept the truth _before_ you do something about it.'

'Sure thing, Plato,' he grumbled, seating himself at the foot of a nearby tree and planting his face into his folded arms propped on his knees. 'Easy for you to say.'

'So tell me about it,' Ichigo prompted, sitting on the next root of the tree. 'What happened that turned you into this emotional wreck of rebellion?'

With much reluctance, Hitsugaya began telling the far-fetched tale of his recent misadventures, carefully omitting implicating details of unnecessarily idiotic behaviour on his part, especially the questionably dangerous lettuce altercation. By the time he was done summarising Aizen's felonies and twisted intentions and what it had to do with him, Ichigo was completely flabbergasted.

'He's, like, a literal cradle-robber,' Ichigo marvelled.

Hitsugaya scowled. 'You're not helping.'

'Okay, okay, let me try that again.' Ichigo cleared his throat dramatically. '…Wow, that's really screwed up.'

Hitsugaya rolled his eyes. 'Want to hear something even more messed up? Before the sun sets today, Aizen's going to show up…somewhere south of here,' he waved a hand vaguely in the direction he believed to be south.

Ichigo's jaw dropped in disbelief. 'And you didn't tell the police?'

Hitsugaya turned incredulously on him. 'No! The police are a branch of the Royal Guard - all they want now is to trap me in that castle so they can dump oil on my head and write my name on some scroll.'

Despite himself, Ichigo chuckled.

Hitsugaya leaned back against the coarse bark of the tree, hitting the back of his head with a dull thud and a dry, bitter laugh. 'But I don't even have a name now, do I? Not one that's mine, at any rate – not the name that monster gave me.'

That shut Ichigo up quickly. He had absolutely zero experience dealing with people having existential crises, and he was pretty sure if he started trying now, it would be an abominable attempt that would most probably go down in history.

'Well,' Ichigo began hesitantly, though he was promptly interrupted and relieved from his futile stabbing in the dark by a heavy, ominous atmosphere that weighed crushingly down on his lungs, almost as if someone were slowling removing the air around him. A coiling sensation of dread deep within him urged him to run, to hide – something, _anything_. Without thinking, he pulled Hitsugaya to his feet and practically threw the boy up the tree in his haste before clambering up himself.

Wordlessly, they climbed higher, until a sufficiently thick layer of foliage separated them from the ground.

'What was that?' Ichigo whispered furiously under the rustling of leaves in the wind.

Hitsugaya jerked his chin leftwards, a deep frown driving wrinkles into his forehead. Perhaps he had not taken kindly to being hurled up a tree.

Ichigo squinted through the leaves and spotted a middle-aged man with dishevelled brown hair, staggering with the hunch and gait of a wild, bloodthirsty beast.

'The regional celebrity Magician sure didn't look like that in the morning paper,' Ichigo commented. 'Is he secretly a werewolf?'

Hitsugaya paid him little regard, for he was staring fixedly at Aizen. 'We need to get rid of him,' he said quietly.

'We?' Ichigo echoed.

Hitsugaya ignored him. 'How are your horseriding skills?'

'No worse than yours,' Ichigo replied solemnly.

Hitsugaya relaxed slightly, leaning against the trunk of the tree, not taking his eyes off Aizen. A small smile began spreading slowly to the corners of his mouth.

'I have a plan.'

.

.

Hitsugaya's plan was beyond ridiculous. It was so ridiculous, it might even border on ingenious.

With unease and disquiet twisting his gut into a nervous knot, Ichigo coaxed the horse Hitsugaya had absconded with into a steady trot towards the city centre. Although he had to admit that the sight of a wanted criminal riding a stolen horse through the town was definitely going to attract the attention of any law enforcer, he was still doubtful about his ability to lead an angry hoard of policemen to an even angrier megalomaniac and induce a lawful showdown.

Regretfully, he did not get very far. He had been riding for less than a minute when he felt magic – raw and burning and uncontrolled – sweep the horse off its feet, sending him flying to the ground. He landed rolling, his arms locked around the sides of his head for protection, and when he finally lost momentum, he looked up to see Hitsugaya on the ground a short distance away. Perhaps he had thought this horse could outrun Aizen, but it wasn't fast enough to outstrip magic.

A deranged laugh echoed in his ears, magnified in the wind.

Ichigo rolled over, doing a double take when he realised the horse was gone. As he scrambled upright, Hitsugaya was already on his feet, running in what appeared to be an arbitrary direction, although knowing him, he was probably operating on a backup plan. After only a moment's hesitation, he pulled himself to his feet and ran after Hitsugaya, catching up with ease.

'What about the-'

'Forget the horse, forget the police,' Hitsugaya said rapidly. Not once did he stumble over his own words or his own feet.

Ichigo settled on not arguing, and instead followed suit a half-pace behind as Hitsugaya dropped down a low stone ledge, landing softly before continuing in a final sprint across untamed weeds.

They were headed for the abandoned lighthouse, he realised.

It took both of them to wrench the rusty door open, very nearly tearing it off its weatherworn hinges, opening up a dank and crammed cavern that spiralled upwards in flimsy stairs and plumes of dust. They took the stairs two at a time, their footsteps echoing deafeningly in the dim, narrow space, not once pausing although their breath was beginning to cloud their vision as they continued up the dizzying twist of steep steps.

'What are we looking for?' Ichigo asked, slightly winded as he thundered past the landing that led to the watch room, which was suspended in a mottled ruin of faded upholstery and broken furniture. Above him, Hitsugaya was already turning the service room inside out.

'Weapons,' the young mastermind said simply.

Ichigo nodded in comprehension. He was busy admiring a dangerously splintered wooden shaft that might have once been the leg of a tall stool when he heard a hollow, metallic _clang_ from the other end of the room.

Hitsugaya cursed as he dropped a large silver can into the dust. 'Damn, it's empty,' Ichigo heard him mutter as he stepped over the remains of a low workbench, and watched as he unearthed another similar can from under a mound of rags and tools, which he tossed aside in the same disappointed manner. It tumbled to the floor, ringing emptily.

'Is there a particular weapon you happen to be searching for?' Ichigo asked, not quite yet ready to put down his dangerous wooden pole.

Hitsugaya didn't answer, and instead hurried right past Ichigo towards the stairs. He ascended the last round of the steps to the lantern room, and Ichigo finally dropped his pole to follow him.

The lantern room was surprisingly neat compared to the wrecks that were the watch room and the service room. Several of the thick glass panes were cracked in places, and they were clouded over with disuse. Hitsugaya ducked under a low-hanging twisted metal structure and around the immense lantern in the centre, leaving a trail in the dust. Reaching out into the dim expanse, his fingers brushed yet another dirty silver can. He pulled it towards him – it was heavy, and scraped noisily against the flooring.

Ichigo stood cluelessly to the side while Hitsugaya wrestled with the third silver can. The lid popped off, slightly dented where it had been forcibly twisted, and a triumphant smile lit up Hitsugaya's dirtied face.

'What is it?' Ichigo asked.

Hitsugaya pushed the can towards him, and a sloshing sound echoed from within it. 'Paraffin,' he said, showing signs of breathlessness for the first time.

'Our ace-in-the-hole is a fifty year old can of paraffin?'

Hitsugaya shrugged. 'Did you see where Aizen went?'

The jarring noise of the lighthouse's door scraping against its rusted hinges and footsteps hitting the stairs spared Ichigo the need to answer. Ichigo stopped to peer over a blackened banister, while Hitsugaya hefted the paraffin into his arms and started down the stairs.

'What are you doing?' Ichigo protested frantically.

'I don't want to be stuck at the top of a tower when he finds us,' Hitsugaya argued back.

'You can't fight with just that,' Ichigo pointed out, gesturing at the paraffin.

This seemed to make Hitsugaya pause for thought, though it did not last long. 'Get that stick,' he said after a moment.

'What stick? –Oh, _that_ stick.' Ichigo realised he was nearly panicking, but he forced it down as he too descended the spiralling steps down to the service room where he had left the wooden pole, and watched in dismay as Hitsugaya trucked on downwards almost fearlessly, miraculously not spilling a drop of his precious fuel.

Hitsugaya could feel his heart rate rise with every passing minute, knowing that no matter how much he willed himself to stay calm, it would ultimately only remain a façade to be broken. Adrenaline kept him focussed and grounded, yet simultaneously lightheaded and breathless, and he was surprised by how well he was holding himself together. He cast an uncertain glance over his shoulder, to ensure Ichigo had reclaimed his stick, before resuming his journey downwards, closer and closer towards the terrifying sounds of Aizen climbing the stairs, hunting them down.

He descended quietly and carefully, treading as close to the wall as he could. He watched, not daring to blink even once, as Aizen rapidly closed the distance between them. They had the upper hand, Hitsugaya tried to convince himself – they were on upper ground, he had a plan, they had sanity on their side. There were so many ways for everything to go wrong.

With hands he hadn't noticed were shaking, he heaved the deadweight in his arms, and tipped its contents over the banister and onto the Magician, who was just one twist of steps below him.

Below him, Aizen, drenched from head to toe, spluttered in surprise.

Behind him, Ichigo choked in disbelief.

'This,' the orange-haired teenager said under his breath, 'does not happen to have anything to do with that ridiculous tale of witches dissolving in water, does it? Because it isn't true, Aizen's not a witch, and that's not water.'

Ignoring the blatant mutiny and lack of faith of his companion, Hitsugaya seized the moment of fugacious chaos and reprised a move he had tried once before in the kitchen that morning – he hurled the empty paraffin can at Aizen's head with all his strength.

The resounding chime of the metal connecting with its target echoed up and down the empty lighthouse. With a sweep of his weapon, Ichigo knocked Aizen off his feet and sent him sprawling down several steps.

Ichigo caught Hitsugaya giving the splintered wooden stick a wondrous look of admiration for a mere split-second, before he sprang back into action. 'Come on,' the younger boy urged, and without a further word, the duo pushed past the rapidly recovering Magician on the stairs and hurtled down an eternity of steps.

The first breath of air, not tainted with decades of dust and rust, was fresh and sweet. Yet, they didn't have the time to stop.

'What's next?' Ichigo asked as they ran to a respectably safe distance from the foot of the abandoned lighthouse.

'Next,' Hitsugaya said, 'we goad him into setting things on fire. When he does, the first thing that'll go up in flames is him.'

'Must he set himself on fire?' Ichigo questioned. 'Can't we, like, throw some flaming thing at him and set him on fire?'

'What are you thinking of?'

'Crudely speaking,' Ichigo said, 'I was thinking of setting one end of my trusty stick on fire and jabbing him in the gut with it.'

Hitsugaya rubbed his chin as he watched Aizen emerge from the lighthouse. 'That is not a bad idea either.'

.

.

They had both agreed that sitting down and trying to start a fire from sparks was probably suicidal.

Feeling tremendously guilty for leaving Hitsugaya to fend for himself empty-handed against a maniac, Ichigo set off sprinting for the closest source of open fire he knew of – the still-blazing ruin of toxic, magic fire that Aizen had caused that morning.

He ran until he felt as if his lungs would burst, until he felt as if his legs would give way, over cobbled roads and fields peppered with potholes, towards the ethereal glow of fire in the night – dyeing a significant portion of the deep twilight sky the colour of day and drowning the air with suffocating pressure.

Ichigo held one end of the wooden shaft up to the fire, holding one sleeve over his nose and mouth as he waited for it to catch the flame. When it did, it burned brightly and viciously, and he carried it as carefully as he could back to where he had left Hitsugaya behind.

Meanwhile, Hitsugaya was strategically fending for himself rather well. He knew Ichigo would return from the same southern path he had taken, so he began retreating towards the north – he needed Aizen to keep his back turned on the path, to keep his attention on anything but Ichigo's return with their trump card. He stayed hidden, biding his time for as long as he could, until he was unceremoniously turned out of his hiding spot behind a cluster of rocks.

Unaware that he was falling for another of Hitsugaya's plots, Aizen advanced upon him. 'Not so brave now, are you?'

'What do you want?' Hitsugaya demanded, dredging up every last drop of bravado he had left in him.

'I want you _gone_ ,' Aizen snarled, though his tone was so terrifyingly frigid and stoically calm. 'I'm going to kill you for ruining my life.'

In spite of the situation, Hitsugaya found himself laughing. 'Me? Ruining your life? How about we talk about how _you_ ruined _my_ life? Or does it not matter because you'll kill me anyway?'

He scrambled backwards with every step forward that Aizen took, terrified he would eventually be closed in by the woods.

'I know what you poured on me,' the Magician spat, 'and I also know many ways to kill you without fire.'

Hitsugaya remained silent, busy counting the seconds as they passed – Ichigo should be back any moment. True enough, a short distance away, he spotted him running at full speed, the flaming torch in his hand a blazing beacon.

He needed to distract Aizen – anyone would notice the fire approaching in this semi darkness.

'Oh,' he said innocently up at the tall man. 'I didn't think you'd notice,' he lied.

This seemed to light a fuse in Aizen – pity it was only figurative; Hitsugaya would have preferred for an actual fuse to go off, but he would have to make do. He ducked as Aizen turned red in the face and shouted, 'Do you take me for some kind of fool?'

Ichigo was only a few metres away now, his arm drawn back as he swung the torch from right behind Aizen. At the last moment, Hitsugaya feinted and rolled away under Aizen and leapt back to his feet.

'I don't care if you're dumb or not,' he yelled right back. 'I only care about outsmarting you!'

And Aizen let out one last roar of rage before the fuel on him ignited.

It was a spectacular sight to behold, one Hitsugaya was sure he would never see again, of fire expanding and consuming and obliterating right before his eyes. For a moment he could only see the light of the fire, feel the flames dancing against him, taste the ash and smoke of flesh burning off bone in a merciless inferno – yet he stood rooted to the spot, almost entranced by the destruction before him, almost apathetic to the fact that he was a hair's breadth away from going up in flames. It was his past, he told himself, his own abominable past that he had set out to retrieve only to destroy. His past, going up in flames before him, perhaps for the better.

It was only when a hand settled on his shoulder and gently pulled him back that he managed to tear his eyes from the scene before him.

Wordlessly, Ichigo dropped the torch, and they turned their backs on the fire and walked away.


	5. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied. I'm on a roll. Here's the epilogue! And confetti!

_The past is dead,_  
_and yet,_  
 _I live, still._  
 _And in that,_  
 _I have found the answer._  
 _I am one with this moment,_  
 _with the present,_  
 _and so, I am infinite._

_-William C. Hannan_

* * *

 

It was a rare, clear day, the sky pure and deep as the ocean, and despite the northern winds, the sun was warm. At the harbour, a small boat was tethered to the wooden dock. A lone figure stood at the edge of the wooden dock, hair blowing in the wind and shoulders hunched against its chilly sting, one hand on the knot that secured the boat to the harbour, tense with hesitation.

‘Hey.’

Hitsugaya turned in surprise towards the voice.

‘Oh, hey,’ he returned softly. ‘Didn’t think I’d see you here.’

Ichigo stood behind him, squinting in the late morning sunlight, taking in the scene before him. ‘I didn’t think I’d see _you_ here. Are you going somewhere?’

Hitsugaya laughed nervously. ‘I guess you could put it that way – I don’t really know what I’m doing this time.’

Ichigo laughed with him, though it was laced with similar uncertainty. ‘I think you did great the last time,’ he said. ‘You were a total genius, you saved both our asses, and you were only fourteen.’

Hitsugaya smiled at the memory. ‘You, on the other hand, were a total mess.’

‘I was, wasn’t I?’ Ichigo said.

They both stared out into the horizon, and a silence settled over them, the washing of the waves and the calling of seagulls surrounding them.

‘Are you going somewhere?’ Ichigo repeated.

Hitsugaya didn’t know what to say. He’d thought he had changed, that he was done with recklessly diving headfirst into his problems with his emotions unchecked. He’d thought that he might be different, after two years – two years after discovering everything he’d thought he knew about himself was wrong, two years of struggling to sort out the mess he’d created for himself. He had thought there would be no more running from his troubles, no more running towards his problems. He had been thinking – about too many things to recall – for so long. He thought he had made a decision. He’d thought he could discard his past, as if it meant nothing to him, and build a future that meant something to him – it all seemed so abstract now, as he stood, balancing at the edge of the pier, the rope to his future in his hands.

‘I don’t know,’ he whispered at length.

‘Then, are you leaving?’ Ichigo rephrased gently.

‘Probably,’ he said quietly.

Ichigo could see the dark patch of skin on Hitsugaya’s left palm, where the burn had healed over, but not without leaving a darkened scar. He wondered if the other boy ever regretted anything, the way he himself had always found past faults to lament. He wondered if the other boy’s endless journey and pursuit of his identity would ever come a close. He wondered if it was possible to self-destruct with dissatisfaction and discontent.

Hitsugaya let out a dry, choked laugh, and leaned heavily against the post on the dock, running one hand through his hair. ‘Look at us,’ he muttered. ‘We’ve changed so much – now _I’m_ the mess.’

Ichigo could only stare in helplessness. How could he tell the boy who had saved him that he didn’t know what to do for him?

‘I think,’ Ichigo began, ‘that it’s okay to not know everything – it’s okay even to not know anything, to not know who you were meant to be, or even who you are. It’s okay to not be who people expect you to be, to not be who you expect yourself to be. The past doesn’t make you – there’s nothing wrong with being who you are in the present, and not knowing who you will be in the future, and it doesn’t matter if you’re imperfect, or incomplete, because isn’t that what makes us all human?’

Hitsugaya stood stock-still, his lips pursed and eyebrows knitted together, but Ichigo could tell he was listening.

‘I’m not going to stop you,’ he continued. ‘Go, grow, change, or don’t – it doesn’t matter. But at the end of it all, come back, because no matter who you are and who you become, there are people here who will want to see you again.’

Hitsugaya was quiet for a minute. Then he said, ‘What will you be doing?’

‘I’m staying on this weird island,’ Ichigo said confidently. ‘Get a job, make a living, maybe date your sister,’ he joked.

Hitsugaya punched him in the arm. ‘She’s got better standards. You don’t stand a chance, ugly face.’

Unfazed, Ichigo continued seriously. ‘But I’ll be waiting, for when you come back.’

‘Thanks,’ Hitsugaya said at length, smiling genuinely. Perhaps he could try coming to peace with himself, to arrange the jumbled mess of his thoughts into something comprehensible – for neither the weight of a past he couldn't change nor the potential of a future he couldn’t control could possibly be more important. He climbed into the boat, coiling the rope as he went, and made a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep. ‘I’ll be back, I promise.’

Perhaps, just maybe, he could move forward, where there would be a chance for the pieces of him to come together.


End file.
